


Finally Alive

by domini_moonbeam



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker will be a jerk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Getting to Know Each Other, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Light Angst, M/M, Romance, Sex, Sharing a Bed, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:34:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25508314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domini_moonbeam/pseuds/domini_moonbeam
Summary: Joe is the new immortal not Nile, and Nicky is the one sent to go find him.Based on a fic prompt!
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 1290
Kudos: 2368





	1. Chapter 1

Joe collapsed under the baking sun.

He couldn’t walk any farther. What day was it? How long had he been doing this?

He was dead. He knew it. But that did not explain this endless march of thirst and heat. Fuck. Was his homophobic asshole brother right? Was this hell and he was damned? No. Even if this was his afterlife, he refused to believe his brother was right. “Fuck that guy. I regret nothing,” Joe mumbled to himself, words garbled by his dry tongue. He sprawled out in the hot sand and groaned.

He waited to die, pretty sure it wouldn’t take this time either anyway, when a shadow fell over him. Merciful darkness that somehow tricked him into feeling cooler for a moment.

When the darkness stayed, he opened his eyes. He might have startled if he hadn’t been out here for so long already. Joe was pretty sure nothing could startle him now. Not even the dark hooded figure looming over him. He stared, unable to see a face in that living shadow. A reaper?

“You are late. _Very late_. Is it normal to make dead men wait this long?” Joe asked.

“You were hard to find,” the reaper said, his voice nothing like Joe would have imagined. It was…beautiful. It spoke English but with a strong accent, like the words were not appreciated by his tongue. Joe ached to hear what words sounded like that were and immediately chastised himself for the thought. Hopefully reapers don’t read thoughts.

The reaper swung its backpack around to the front, unzipping it. It was all alarmingly normal. He pulled out a large water bottle and Joe sat up, mouth open and dry lips breaking. The reaper uncapped the bottle, took one drink himself, and then poured out the rest on Joe’s head. Joe didn’t have the time to complain about the waste, mouth open to swallow as much as he could and groaning in relief as the cool water spilled over his skin and soaked into his shirt.

When the bottle was empty, the man stuffed it back into the bag and then pulled out a second one. He zipped up his backpack this time and swung it back around to his back. Uncapping the bottle, he squatted down and held it out to Joe. When he came down to eye level, Joe could see into that dark hood. He stared, for a moment forgetting even the water. He was, literally, the man of his dreams. The one he had been seeing for days now. Ever since he died.

“I will explain. Drink first,” he said, nudging the bottle closer to his face.

Joe took it, still a little distracted by the reaper that was far from what a reaper should look like. And then he drank and for a moment forgot all else. He closed his eyes, drinking and drinking that sweet water until he thought his stomach might burst.

The reaper stood and let him take his time, still positioned to cast his shadow over Joe.

When he finished the water he felt better. Phenomenally better. His lips weren’t broken anymore and his skin wasn’t sunburned. He stared at the empty bottle, turning it in his hands, but it was just a normal water brand. No magic.

He heard the reaper speak and looked up. He wasn’t speaking English this time. He was on a phone, looking around at the dunes. He spoke Italian and it fit perfectly in his mouth. Joe wasn’t sure if it was the delirium of the heat, the madness of being a dead man, or just the truth, but he thought then that it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

“I found him. I know it took a while. He didn’t make it easy,” the reaper was saying on the phone. “Yes. I’ll bring him home. It’ll take a few days.” There was a pause and then a smile on the reaper’s lips. The person on the other end must have said something familiar and kind to make him smile like that. He nodded even though the person on the line could not see. “I will.” He hung up and looked down at Joe, surprised to find him staring back at him.

“Can you walk now? The car isn’t far,” the reaper asked, back to English.

Joe wasn’t sure he could but he tried, shocked when it wasn’t all that hard at all. He was still tired, yes, but a thousand times better than he had been ten minutes ago. “Who are you?”

The reaper blinked, stunned, and then looked almost embarrassed. He took a step back, head dipping to the side. “Nicolo di Genova, but Nicky will do. And your name?”

Joe almost laughed. “Why would you come out here to find me if you don’t even know my name?”

Nicky shrugged and started walking. “Names are the least important part of a person.”

Joe blinked, thinking about that, and then hurried to follow him back the direction he had come. “My name is Yusuf Al-Kaysani, but everyone calls me Joe.”

“Who is everyone?” Nicky asked.

“Um…” Joe thought about that. Everyone was just everyone he had ever known. He walked for a while longer, until he saw the truck parked on a road at the bottom of the hill, a road easily unseen if not for that car. He reached out suddenly and grabbed the man’s arm. He was honestly surprised when his fingers closed around hot fabric and pressed against the muscle of his upperarm.

Nicky stopped, turning to raise an eyebrow at the hand on his arm and then stare right at Joe, waiting with what seemed to be the infinite patience of a hunter—which is to say, patient until he pulls the trigger.

“You’re real,” Joe said.

Nicky raised the other eyebrow too and then his whole expression softened, he turned toward Joe rather than away, still not brushing his hand off his arm. “Yes. And so are you. And so is the car down there with air conditioning and a cooler in the backseat. I have been looking for you for three days. You have seen him in your dreams, yes? Me and the others,” he added the last quickly, as if it just being him alone was too intimate.

“Yes,” Joe agreed. “How?”

“You died, didn’t you?”

Joe stared at him. His free hand reached up idly and touched the back of his head, blood crusted in his curls and long since dried into the back of his shirt. He had awoken in the desert and stared at his own blood and brain and bone in the sand, a halo around where his head had landed when he fell. When he died.

“How many times did you die?” Nicky asked when he didn't answer.

“I don’t know. Do I need to keep track?” Did he only get so many?

Nicky laughed, the sound surprising and beautiful. “No. No. Just curious. I lost count long ago.”

“How long ago?”

Nicky glanced at him, thinking and then shrugged. “I stopped counting after the war. Now I just keep track of the interesting ones.”

“Which war?” Interesting ones?

“Crusades.”

Joe sat on that for a while, staring at the man as they walked up to the car. “Is this a joke?” he finally asked.

Nicky sighed. He opened the backseat door of the car and tossed his bag in before closing it. On his way back toward Joe, he pulled a knife from his belt. Joe immediately tensed, hands forward to defend himself.

Nicky shook his head and stopped just out of arms reach. He held his left arm forward, pushing the sleeve up to his elbow and then before Joe could move, dragged the blade across his own skin. Joe rushed forward. He snatched the knife from Nicky’s right hand and then took hold of his left wrist, blood spilling off his skin and onto the sand. He swore but before he could toss the knife out of reach and try to stop the bleeding—it stopped on its own. He watched the cut heal and then gently thumbed away the blood on perfect skin. “No,” he whispered, shocked.

“We heal fast and we come back when we die,” Nicky said simply, not trying to pull his arm from Joe’s hold but letting him study it. “If you don’t believe me you can kill me and see.”

Joe stared at him, expecting a smile to signal it as a joke but Nicky just waited, glancing once at the knife still in Joe’s hand. Joe let go of his wrist and took a step back, shaking his head. “No.”

Nicky shrugged once and then pushed his sleeve back down, turning for the car. “Keep the knife. Get in the car.”

Joe used his shirt to clean the knife of Nicky’s blood before flicking it shut and sliding it into his pocket.

The engine on, the air conditioning kicked in. Joe groaned in relief to sit in the seat, close the door, and feel the heat being drained away.

“There’s more water in the back and food. Oh, and some clothes. I figured you might be a mess.” Nicky said, matter-o-factly as he started driving, soon speeding down that endless road.

Joe thanked him and twisted around in his seat. He found a shirt, pulled his own off and put on the clean one before digging another bottle of water out of the cooler on the backseat and a plastic wrapped sandwich. He sat forward again and for a moment just absorbed the surrealness of his situation. It couldn’t be real. But he had spent the last few days dealing with the fact that he was dead, so this felt like a blessing. Anything that wasn’t endlessly walking and dying in the desert was welcomed.

He uncapped the water. “How many of us are there? I mean, how many like us?”

“Not many. We’re only five now, with you, but we belong together. I think it is why we have the dreams, so that we will find each other.”

“And you’re taking me to the others?”

Nicky nodded. “We try to do good. Like overly skilled mercenaries with morals that don’t get paid nearly enough.”

Joe laughed and drank more water. He wasn’t sure about any of this except for Nicky. Nicky, he felt sure about.

* * *

“So what were you doing out here?” Nicky asked.

“Dying,” Joe laughed and then shrugged. “I was working freelance for a company defending transports. The transport we were defending turned out to be human traffickers.” He sighed, losing steam for the first time since Nicky found him. He had been a surprisingly easy newbie so far. He had been bracing himself for another Booker—god help them. Nicky glanced at Joe. He had his head leaned back and eyelids heavy now that he’d eaten the sandwich and settled into his seat. He stared at the road ahead. “I killed the traffickers and let the people get away.” He paused, smile gone when he shrugged. “My team shot me and left me in the desert.”

Nicky squeezed the steering wheel but nodded tightly. There was a long pause before Nicky asked, “You want to find them?”

“Why?”

“To kill them.”

Joe looked at him, a half smile on his lips before he pressed it back and shook his head. “No.” He shifted in his seat, turning sideways to face Nicky.

Nicky smiled a little curiously. It wasn’t like he could do the same while driving and he definitely wasn’t used to someone looking at him as much or as intensely as Joe did. It was probably because he was still trying to figure out this whole immortal thing—maybe expecting horns to sprout from his head or something.

“You’re really a thousand years old?”

Nicky snorted. “Not quite a thousand yet…”

“Do you know any great secrets of the universe?”

“Such as?”

“Is there a God? Which one? What is the meaning of life? Like sort of thing.”

“No. Definitely not,” Nicky answered easily, catching the smile on Joe’s face from the corner of his eye. “We just try to make the world less horrible, I guess.”

“Does it work?”

“So far? Not so much.” He laughed and then shrugged. “We do what we can.”

Joe nodded, eyes closing for another second before opening again.

“You can sleep if you want. It’s a long drive.”

“Seems like a waste. How often does a person get to talk to an immortal? I should ask questions.”

Nicky laughed again, surprising himself. He liked Joe. “I’m not going anywhere. You can ask questions later.”

Joe hummed for a second and Nicky was sure he would fall asleep, but then he started in on the questions. They ranged from various wars to historical figures and whether Nicky had been there or seen them, to Nicky’s best and worst deaths. It had become a strange sort of game. The man would ask if he had died in some absurd way and, surprisingly, the answer was usually yes and followed by a story.

With every story, he was sure Joe would fall asleep. How could he not? He had probably died in that desert every day since first getting shot in the head. He had to be exhausted. He was exhausted! Nicky could see it. But he never dozed off when Nicky was talking and always followed up with another questions.

By the time they reached the city, to his shame, Nicky had learned very little about Joe’s life while Joe seemed to be cataloguing Nicky’s.

“Are you a historian or a mercenary?” Nicky finally asked when he found a spot in a narrow alley to park the car. It was already dark out.

“Can’t I be both?” Joe asked, sitting up to look around. “Where?”

Nicky got out, opened the back door and put everything he needed into the backpacks. There were two. He passed one to Joe who took it without question. “I’m going to get us someplace to sleep. Tomorrow we’re catching a train.”

Joe nodded, slung the bag over his shoulder and followed him around the building and up the street. He didn’t ask why they were staying in a dive motel on this side of town or where their end destination was. Nicky was starting to worry that Joe was all around too trusting. He was going to have to keep an eye on him.

He surprised himself with that thought. Not sure if he really thought he needed to keep an eye on Joe for Joe’s sake, or if he just wanted to. There was something about him, something so easy to be with and so calming. He filled some long hollow silence inside Nicky’s chest.

He was monetarily surprised when they spoke to the owner of the building and Joe knew Farsi. He even gave Nicky a cocky smirk and a wink when he negotiated the already abysmally low cost of a room. The man insisted there was only one room available in the building and they took it.

Nicky paid and led the way upstairs. He walked into the tiny room first, frowning at the one narrow bed and short table. Not even a chair. He dropped his bag in the corner and turned, closing the door when Joe walked in, piling his things close Nicky’s. Surprisingly, he hadn’t complained yet, not even a disgruntled groan.

“Take the bed,” Nicky told him. He could sleep sitting with his back to the wall. He’d slept in worse places.

Joe raised an eyebrow, those eyes tracking Nicky. He felt them even before he turned and met them. “There’s room,” he insisted and turned away long enough to settle himself on his side on the bed, his back to the wall and that small piece of mattress left like an invitation.

Nicky stared. He wasn’t sure what exactly about this was the most alarming to him—that this beautiful stranger was inviting him so casually into his bed, or that he trusted Nicky so much. Why? All he had done was come out and collect him from the desert. He told himself it would have been exactly the same if Nile had come instead of himself.

Joe smirked sleepily at Nicky’s hesitation. “If I get handsy with you, you could kill me, right?”

Nicky laughed before he could stop himself and took those two steps to the bed. He turned and laid down on his side, back to Joe so that he could see the door. His heart beat faster in his chest, faster than he’d felt it beat in centuries.

“Seriously, just elbow me if I get in your space,” Joe said, no longer a joke but laced with a yawn.

Nicky turned out the light on the little bedside table. There wasn’t enough room on the bed to have any real division of space other than where they physically aligned. At one point in the night Nicky started to tip forward from the edge, waking just as he was about to fall off the bed. Only he didn’t fall. An arm had hooked around his waist and pulled him back, pressing his back to Joe’s chest.

Nicky’s mind raced, still between awake and asleep.

“Okay?” Joe asked in a grumbly, tired voice of his own, his palm warm where it pressed to Nicky’s stomach.

“Yeah,” Nicky agreed and they both fell back asleep.


	2. Family Gathering

They were sitting across from each other in the private cabin he’d booked on the train and Nicky laughed so hard at the stupid joke Joe told that he had to scrub tears from his eyes. Travel was usually something Nicky did quietly, like most of his very long life. This reminded him of the centuries with Andy, Quynh, and Nile. Those had been the best of his life so far—the happiest. He still had Andy and Nile in his life, of course, but nothing was the same after they lost Quynh. Andy was never the same. Nicky often left to do reconnaissance or solo jobs for Andy while she kept Nile and Booker closer. Nicky could be trusted to navigate the world, do whatever jobs she needed taken care of, and return on his own without being captured. And if he did disappear, she could assume he wanted to and not have to come looking.

He was more than happy to get away from Booker most of the time but the quiet grew long, so long that he didn’t even realize how deep he was in it until it broke. He convinced himself that he preferred to be alone, only realizing what a cruel lie that had been when he was with people that made him feel alive.

He had to remind himself again and again that he barely knew Joe. That they were bound by fate and family in a way, but that he hadn’t known him more than a couple days. It was hard to remember otherwise. He felt more at home around Joe than he had anywhere in the world over the last millennia. It was terrifying if he let himself think about it, so he tried not to. Luckily, Joe was very distracting.

“Okay,” Joe said, like a punctuation between one conversation and another. “What about kids? Can you have kids? Are they all immortal?”

Nicky was still smiling from laughing and shook his head. “No. I mean, I wouldn’t know myself, but Booker has had plenty of opportunity since his first death and I’ve never heard of it happening and Andy is far from a nun.”

He had told Joe about the others, enough to give him their names and a general idea of who they were, but insisted that their stories were their own to tell him and Nicky would not steal that enjoyment from him. Joe had insisted that it could be no better enjoyment than hearing Nicky tell it. Nicky decided he was abundantly charming and silently retracted some of his worries about Joe’s ability to survive. He might not be skeptical by instinct, but he could probably charm his way out of most problems.

Now though, the dark-haired man was staring at him with a curious smirk and a glint in his brown eyes. “What do you mean you wouldn’t know?” His smile grew into a grin. “Do not tell me you are a thousand-year-old virgin.”

Nicky shook his head. “No. And still not a thousand years old.”

* * *

Joe had been studying Nicky for the last two days—since the moment he appeared as a shadow of mercy and death in the desert.

If Nicky lied at all, Joe had not been able to tell. And he was usually very good at reading people. Strangely, he suspected the immortal simply told the truth, all the time. It was amazing. It made the answers to his questions even more thrilling, even though there was no way Joe could actually check if he was lying or not. He just had to believe him.

He obviously wasn’t used to being studied though. He would meet Joe’s gaze for long stretches and then look away, down, out the window, before settling on a point in the cabin again. But he didn’t tell Joe to stop looking at him. So Joe had not stopped. He didn’t want to stop. Nicky was amazing. His expressions were clear—careful, thoughtful—but clear. And he gave little things away if you were looking. And Joe was looking. His cheek had ticked once when Joe asked if he was a virgin. It was an almost smile, an almost laugh, pulled down by a present threat. He answered no, distracting to a note about his age which Joe would not stop saying was a thousand, and glanced toward the door like he might leave.

Joe thought about being coy, about asking more sideways questions trying to goad the answer out of the other man, but the way his shoulders squared and his head tipped subtly to the side, already suggested he was bracing himself for something. A thousand years of being gay? And Joe thought his own brother had been a nightmare. “You don’t like women?” Joe asked rather than playing around with it.

Nicky looked back at him, no longer smiling, but prepared to be stoic no matter what happened next. He was unafraid but tired and it was all right there in his beautiful eyes. “I like them fine. Just not in my bed.”

Joe wanted to grin and maybe even sing a song. He had felt a little bad for curling an arm around Nicky last night—not really for the arm but for how much he had enjoyed holding on to him. He supposed he still did feel bad for that. Just because this guy liked men, didn’t mean he liked Joe the way Joe liked Nicky.

“You know,” Joe said easily, the afternoon world sliding by outside the train window. “For about a minute there in the desert, I thought my douchebag homophobe brother might have been right and I was in hell.”

Nicky blinked at him and relaxed with a small smirk. “Only a minute? I spent a decade half-certain the endless crusades was just my hell.”

Joe’s smile dropped and he sat upright. “Really?” A decade? Thinking he was alone and damned? Nicky stared at him, surprised, and that hurt even more than what he’d said—like no one had ever reacted to it like this before. “How many times did you die?”

“In the crusades?” Nicky shrugged easily. “I don’t know. I told you, you lose count eventually and in those times there were a lot of opportunities to die.”

Joe didn’t like that. He had understood that Nicky had fought and died in wars, but not realized that he had been doing it alone. “Didn’t someone come for you? Andy?” Like Nicky had come for him.

Nicky nodded. “She did, eventually.” And then he smiled ruefully. “Travel took much longer back then.”

Joe wanted to ask more about that, about a decade alone and confused.

“So you have family?” Nicky asked, perhaps changing the topic?

Joe snorted. “Just the horrible brother. He pretends I’m dead anyway.”

“You are handling this well,” Nicky said but it didn’t sound exactly like a compliment.

Joe laughed and shrugged. “I died. I could have ended up anywhere or nowhere. Instead, a beautiful man came and found me and asked me to help him and his friends save people. It’s not as traumatizing as it could have been.”

Nicky stared at him and Joe wasn’t sure if he was impressed or just thought he was a complete idiot. Finally Nicky nodded, pressing back a smile. “Okay. If you do start to lose your mind, please let me know.”

“Why? Are you a therapist?”

Nicky couldn’t hold back the smile anymore but he tried to look out the window rather than flash it directly at Joe. Why was he hiding those? Joe felt like he was earning them. “No. But I brought duct tape in case I have to tie you up.”

Joe wasn’t sure if that was a joke but he smiled. He considered making a comment about letting Nicky tie him up any time he liked, very interested to see if the man would blush, but he held his tongue—this time. It was only their second day, after all.

* * *

They spent the rest of day two and half of three on trains before hopping off in Genéve and getting a car. It was raining and Nicky drove.

Joe could be quiet for long stretches but it wasn’t awkward. And then out of nowhere he’d start a conversation, picking it up like Nicky had been the one to think of it and he was obliging. It was incredible.

He had caught himself watching Joe sleep on the train, sitting across from him. It was the only time he could really look at him without him noticing and looking back. Joe was much more perceptive than he had first given him credit for—even if it was just in his own thoughts.

The closer they came to the little town and the safehouse, the more Nicky wanted to just turn the car around. It was wildly selfish, crazy even, and completely out of character. But a part of him dreaded delivering Joe to the family. They would love him, of course, and look after him. It was where he belonged. But a very selfish part of Nicky didn’t want to lose his attention. It was startling to find that part of himself, he had thought it dead in that first war.

He pulled up to the small house in the afternoon, killed the engine and looked at Joe. He was looking back at him. Nicky thought it was hard to read Joe—to understand everything going on behind those eyes.

“Ready?” Nicky asked because the man was still in the car and because a part of him wanted to drag it out a little longer.

“Thank you, Nicolo,” Joe said in Italian, using Nicky’s birth name.

Nicky stared, startled by the sound of his own name rolling off someone’s tongue with such sincerity and again by the language.

Joe smiled and winked before sliding out of the car. He stood in the rain, waiting for Nicky to join him before going into the house.

* * *

Joe noticed many things when they reached the safehouse in France and met up with the others. The first, was that Nicky loved these people. He embraced each of the two women with lingering affection, eyes closing for a moment when he held them as though it had been a lifetime since they last met. And they loved him.

He also noticed that Nicky and Booker did not hug. They looked at one another, nodding in greeting and exchanging information. What Joe couldn’t tell from that, was if they were simply hands off or if they actually disliked one another. Andy and Nile gave it no notice either way, so it must be the norm.

They all welcomed Joe in, as if he was lost family, and it eased something in his chest that had been wanting long before his death. Andy led the way toward a table while Booker grabbed glasses and wine. Joe was about to take a seat, enjoying the easy banter of the others, when he noticed Nicky still in his jacket and starting back out of the kitchen.

Joe caught Nicky’s wrist, stopping the man and thrilling at the way he looked back at him, leaning in and waiting, ready to answer any question Joe had. He never pulled away. Joe had to let go before he started rolling his thumb against Nicky’s wrist to feel his pulse. “Are you leaving?” he asked quietly, the others arguing about something that was making them laugh.

Nicky softened and shook his head. “Getting groceries. I’ll be right back.”

Joe nodded but couldn’t stop himself from adding, “Do you want company?” Like they hadn’t just gotten out of the car and like he wasn’t meant to get to know the people around this table.

Nicky stared like he was surprised by the question. Joe couldn’t imagine why he would be. Who wouldn’t want to follow Nicky around? He was smart and funny and had a thousand years of stories and thoughts. He opened his mouth and for a second Joe was sure he’d say yes, he was already nodding, but then he glanced over Joe’s shoulder at the others. “No,” he said but smiled and touched Joe’s shoulder, squeezing it once. “I’ll be right back. Ask Andy about renaissance painters.”

Booker laughed. Andy swore.

Joe looked between them. “Why? Did she know them?”

“Oh, she knew them,” Booker said with an eyebrow lift.

“No!” Joe sat down. He glanced back again just in time to see Nicky’s back on his way out. His heart sank a little. It was his first moment of actual dread since he died. Everything had been so surreal. Now things were becoming solid again, still crazy but in a way he could work with. But it was hard to shake the feeling of unease when Nicky was out of sight, like he might just not come back. It was stupid, he knew that logically. Nicky would come back or he wouldn’t. He was a grown man. A thousand-year-old man. He could do as he liked.

Still. Every so often in that amazing conversation at a table of immortals, he glanced back at the door.

Booker pushed a glass of wine in front of him.

It turned out Nile had died her first time around the same time as Nicky. They had met briefly, before ever realizing. Nile told the story of how he had saved her once, years before her death and before she had pretended to be a boy to join the army. Andy and Quynh had found Nile first and then the three had gone on to search for Nicky. It had taken a long time.

Booker was younger and it didn’t take long to realize that he did not appreciate their situation. He called it a curse. No one argued but Nile rolled her eyes and went back to telling another story.

Joe sighed a breath of relief he didn’t know he was holding when he heard the front door. Nile hopped up before Joe could to help with the groceries and the stories continued to roll out.

The group got into the best arguments—who had killed the most infamous asshole, who had died the most embarrassing death, who had the greatest claim to fame in lovers.

Nicky made dinner and Nile helped, the two moving around each other with practiced ease. Joe envied that and marveled at the idea of having it someday.

After dinner, while they were still around the table, Booker and Nile ended up on a heated argument over which one of them had the most lovers—already agreeing that Andy was in first place and they were just fighting for second. Andy toasted herself briefly and hid her smile behind the lip of her glass.

Booker eventually conceded and Nile threw her arms up in glory. “That puts me in second place and Booker in third.” She dragged out the word ‘third’ to make it loathsome and earn another laugh from Andy.

Booker sulked and shrugged, finishing his glass of wine and reaching for the bottle. “I suppose that puts you in fourth, Joe,” he muttered, shooting a not so kind look in Nicky’s direction.

Nicky pretended expertly not to notice. But Joe did. He frowned.

Nile threw an arm over Nicky’s shoulders, leaning in and kissing his temple. She didn’t exactly glare at Booker, but there was something warning in her gaze before she rose to start clearing the table.

Booker groaned, like the table had spoken and he didn’t think it fair. “It’s not like it was a lie,” he complained in French, turning to Andy for some sort of support. “You know. He is dead inside.” He laughed like it was a joke.

Andy stared at him hard and Booker winced and nodded, rising from the table. “I’ll do the dishes, Nile,” he said, crossing the room for the kitchen.

When Joe looked at Nicky, the man actually flashed him an easy smile, maybe assuming he hadn’t understood the parts in French. He made an effort not to show any signs of hurt or offense, but Joe didn’t buy it.

Joe stood and stretched. “What time are we starting tomorrow?” They had talked about training.

Andy suggested a time and he nodded, grateful when Nicky rose and offered to show him where he could sleep tonight.

* * *

Nicky led Joe into the narrow room of beds. Andy had already said she was staying up and Booker had dumped his bag on the middle bed. That left one small bed to the right of it and the slightly wider one in the corner against the wall to the left.

Joe had waited those seconds to be told where to put his tired body.

Nicky pointed to the slightly wider bed. “Wall.” He tried to assure himself that he made the choice based on logic—on the available options. It would be weird to put Joe on a bed with Nile at this point and though he definitely could put himself and Nile on that bed without a problem, he didn’t like the idea of putting Joe on the other side of Booker from himself. Booker was a part of the family, yes, but that didn’t mean he trusted him more than he had to. He almost winced thinking about how Booker had tried to embarrass him. He could see it coming too, almost as soon as the conversation had kicked off and Booker was well into his second bottle.

Booker had spent centuries trying to get a rise out of Nicky, trying to make him show even a shadow of his own level of misery at their endless existence. Booker oscillated between thinking they were alike, both ghosts of who they once were, and then other times certain that Nicky was the walking embodiment of heartless immortality. It had not cultivated a good relationship.

Joe didn’t argue, rolling onto the bed and into the corner. His eyebrows rose pleasantly. “It’s bigger than the last bed.”

Nicky smirked and laid down next to him, back to Joe and facing the room, checking his gun before sliding it under his pillow and settling in. He felt Joe thinking. The rest of the family were shuffling around the kitchen still, talking about going to sleep and the morning plans.

Joe rolled onto his side, a breath between them. “We’re not safe here?” Joe asked very quietly and his breath was against the back of Nicky’s neck.

“Safe enough,” he promised.

Another pause. “But you don’t trust them?”

Nicky’s heart clenched, realizing how much this man trusted him. He was asking if they were really his allies or not. “I do. And you should trust Nile and Andy completely.”

Joe nodded once. He felt it on their shared pillow. “Booker?”

Nicky sighed and shrugged. “He did not handle immortality well,” he whispered. That was the nicest way of putting it. “I’ll fix the sleeping arrangements tomorrow so you can have your own bed.”

“No,” Joe said, almost too fast.

Nicky lifted his head to look back at him.

Joe settled back, making a point of looking comfortable. “I like having you and your gun there.”

Nicky raised an eyebrow. “You’re immortal.”

Joe imitated his eyebrow lift. “Then why the gun?”

Nicky tried not to smile and turned back toward the room, settling on his side and turning out the light.

“Nicolo?” Joe asked.

Nicky opened his eyes in the dark, breath catching in his chest at his name again, spoken like a secret when no one else was around.

“You are not dead,” Joe said in Italian. “Not inside or out.”

Nicky sighed and closed his eyes.

Joe didn’t curl an arm around Nicky that night, because he had no excuse too.

They both silently wished he had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, I did the bed thing AGAIN! I'm sorry!
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone taking an interest in this AU! I was so surprised and am so SO excited to write more of this!
> 
> Also, I am kind of loosey goosey about locations and travel time, I try to be reasonable but please PLEASE do not double check my work and tell me how wildly inaccurate I am, instead just accept my blanket apology. I am not a historian and I am not checking travel time. I am, indeed, making shit up...mostly so they'll kiss.
> 
> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/search/domini%20boombeam)


	3. Exhale

The first time Joe saw Nicky die was the worst moment of his life. And he had died a few times himself. This was so much worse.

They were in a fire fight in a building and he turned just in time to see a bullet blow through the side of Nicky’s head. His body collapsed, dead before he hit the ground, and it felt like he’d dragged the breath right out of Joe. He shot the man that shot Nicky, the rest of the team still moving forward to secure their position in the hall.

Joe crouched beside him, staring, his heart pounding in his throat. Nicky didn’t move, his eyes still open but the light in them gone.

“Nicky!” Andy called from up ahead. She didn’t sound worried or exactly distressed, more impatient.

Joe tried to remember that first day he’d met Nicky, weeks ago now, and how he’d dragged a knife over his arm and Joe had watched him heal. He tried to ground himself in that reality but this was an eternity longer. He started to reach for him, to touch his cheek, his own fear choking him.

And then Nicky jerked and gasped for air, eyes blinking away that darkness of nothing. He coughed.

Joe sighed so heavily he closed his eyes, grabbing one of Nicky’s arms.

Nicky blinked at him, confused for a second before looking around. “Damn,” he muttered and rolled over, grabbing his rifle and getting back to his feet, blood down one side of his face and neck. “Come on. We’ll fall behind,” he croaked, grabbing at Joe’s arm and tugging him forward, back to work.

* * *

It had been three weeks of training and getting to know each other and traveling for missions.

Nicky had been fighting in Andy’s little pack for at least eight hundred years, but he’d never really fought in tandem with anyone until Joe. It was confusing and thrilling. It came naturally, the effort to look out for the other, exchanging gear as they moved and finishing each others kills when they had too many enemies up close.

Nicky liked it and that scared the shit out of him.

He stood in the shower. It took a while to rinse all the blood off. Head wounds were always a mess. His thoughts trailed back to waking up and seeing Joe staring at him with that bewildering expression of relief and pain. At first Nicky had thought maybe he’d been hurt but that wasn’t it. He had been _waiting_ for Nicky to come back. Had he been afraid he wouldn’t? Nicky decided maybe that was it, because he’d never seen Nicky die before. Maybe he still hadn’t completely absorbed this whole immortal deal?

He turned off the water, stepped out of the shower and grabbed a towel. They’d driven through the night to get back to Germany and one of the better safe houses. It was out on a stretch of land, at least a twenty-minute drive from the nearest town and two hours from the city.

He dressed and bagged his dirty clothes.

He almost ran into Joe when he opened the door and stepped out.

Joe’s hand touched his arm, almost the same spot where he’d held on when Nicky revived the day before. “Sorry,” he muttered with a smile, giving his arm a gentle squeeze before stepping aside to let Nicky pass before he ducked into shower.

Nicky’s heart raced. And why? Because of a touch? Fuck. He needed to get himself together. Joe was just nice. And Nicky was…not. He scrubbed a hand over his face and walked through the room, out toward the big open living room and dining room of the loft. He tossed the garabage bag with his clothes onto the growing pile near the door and pulled a new pair of boots out of the closet, sitting to lace them up.

Booker came in from outside, sidestepping the pile of bloody clothes and still a mess himself. Andy had told him to get rid of the car and find a new one. He tossed the keys onto the nearest counter and eyed Nicky. Nicky felt it. It did not feel the same as when Joe looked at him. Wasn’t that interesting? Nicky thought so, but he hadn’t decided why.

“I don’t think you’ve stayed with us this long in a century, Nick,” Booker pointed out. Nicky never liked the way he said _‘Nick’_. He only said it like that when he was in one of his moods and he had been riding this mood since Nicky and Joe first showed up weeks ago. “Don’t tell me you have a crush on the new kid.”

Nicky refused to cringe because Booker would see it and take it as triumph. He was always looking for a reaction, for something to make himself feel. Nicky finished lacing up one boot and started on the other.

“You’re a ghost, Nick. Just like me. We’re dead men. And that kid’s too alive for you.”

Nicky hated how those words resonated with his own fears. He wanted to say that Joe wasn’t a kid, but that felt like he was just giving his own feelings away, and he knew Booker was just searching around for soft spots he could press. Usually, Nicky didn’t care. Usually, he’d let Booker use him for a punching bag when he was in moods like this because what did it matter? Booker was in pain and Nicky was not. But right now? He felt like nothing but soft spots.

Booker started forward, boots heavy on the hardwood, coming straight for him.

Nicky finished lacing his boot and looked up just when the other man stopped in front of him. His eyes were wild, his hands twitching and halfway to fisted. “No,” Nicky said flatly.

Booker’s eyes widened a fraction. Confusion did not mix well with anger.

Nicky leaned his head back, neck exposed because he wasn’t afraid. He had never been afraid of Booker. He hadn’t been afraid of much of anything in the last five hundred years.

“What are you doing with that kid?” Booker ground out. “You think he will make this eternity feel better? You think he’ll want you?”

Nicky rose to his feet, like the lack of space between them didn’t bother him. It did. He had never liked physical contact from people he didn’t care for and the list of people he cared for was desperately short. He had spent many centuries understanding Booker, but understanding did not mean he liked him. “Go clean up and sleep,” Nicky told him, voice still flat. He knew that wasn’t going to work but he didn’t know what else to try. Booker wanted reactions from him that he simply never had.

“You only want him because you’re empty inside. You don’t want to be alone,” Booker decided, trying to punch at weaknesses he guessed at.

Nicky sighed, annoyed, and looked up at him, unimpressed and unafraid. “If that were true, I would not have turned you down all those centuries ago.”

Booker moved fast, faster than anyone would expect a man that drunk could. He grabbed Nicky by the jaw and dragging him up off his toes, turning them both to slam him up against the nearest wall. Nicky bared his teeth in a snarl but didn’t stop him at first. He had let this happen before. He had thought it was some kindness or penance. Booker had anger and Nicky had the immortality to take it. But he didn’t want to take it anymore.

Nicky’s mind raced. A split second with a thousand thoughts. This wasn’t really about him or Joe. It was about Booker. But he couldn’t keep letting this happen. Bookers fingers tightened around his neck until he cut off his air. His eyes were glazed over with pain and anger and Nicky could see it all so clearly, close up. He hadn’t really helped him by letting him take it out on someone over the centuries. But most importantly, he couldn’t let this be normal if Joe was in the mix. What if Booker thought he could turn this anger on Joe too? What if Joe saw and thought less of Nicky?

_Fuck._

He moved, kneeing Booker in the inner thigh, effectively dropping him to one knee and Nicky back to his feet. He punched him in the face before he could recover from his surprised, landing hard on his ass on the floor. _So much for being quiet._ It was enough to startled Booker out of his own fit, those hazy eyes staring up at him in shock. Nicky could count on one hand the number of times he’d hit Booker. He loomed over him now. “The only reason I didn’t use a knife, was because I don’t want to explain the mess. No more, Book. You get your shit together and you leave me out of it.”

Booker would probably apologize after he’d slept this off, he usually did, but he wasn’t out of his own mire of misery yet, so he started to gather himself, lurching back to his feet. Nicky sighed. Maybe he could break his leg and drop him onto the couch without making too much noise.

And then Booker froze, eyes no longer on Nicky but to the side, toward the hall.

Nicky turned. Joe was right there, right behind him, gun out and pointed right at Booker’s head. He looked furious but didn’t say a word, like he was still deciding whether or not to pull the trigger—either willing Booker to back up or to take another step forward and make the choice for him.

Nicky sighed and pushed his hair out of his face, embarrassed. He thought about just leaving, that was what he usually did, but that would mean leaving Joe with Booker. “Breakfast?” he asked instead, not quite looking at Joe.

Joe nodded tightly but didn’t move until Nicky walked to the door, farther from Booker.

In the car, Joe put the gun in the glove compartment and dug around in there.

Before Nicky could turn the engine on, Joe was leaning toward him. He froze. Joe nudged his chin up and started rubbing a napkin against his neck. Nicky stole a glance at his face, so close to his own but for once not looking back. He still looked pissed. Nicky supposed that made sense. Booker was an ass and this pretty much made their little family look sketchy. “It’s not a big deal,” Nicky tried to assure him when he let go of his face and finished cleaning away the smudges of blood and dirt Booker’s hands had left on his throat.

Joe leaned back into his seat, watching Nicky and still frowning. “What was that?”

Nicky drove. How long had Joe been standing there? What exactly was he pissed about? “Booker’s a mess and he gets riled up sometimes.” He shrugged, hoping that was enough. It had been enough for him for the last several centuries, so why not? Booker was a mess. Sometimes that mess came flying his way.

* * *

Joe watching Nicky carefully. “So, that’s normal? To hurt each other?” Booker had had his hands around Nicky’s throat, had lifted him off his feet, and for too long, Nicky had done nothing. Joe had stood there, waiting, expecting him to do something—to give him some signal of how he was supposed to handle that scene. But he had just stayed there for so long, until his face turned a deep red and Joe began to worry he’d just let the guy strangle him.

“No. That’s not normal and they don’t…” Nicky said quickly but struggled to explain. He dragged a breath and sighed. His grip tightened on the steering wheel. “He goes to a dark place sometimes and gets destructive, but he would never raise a hand to the others outside of training.” He glanced at Joe, meeting his gaze for a second before looking at the road again. “You don’t let him pull shit like that on you, _ever_. You shoot him if he does.”

“Then why you?” Joe pressed.

Nicky hesitated and then shrugged tightly. He was obviously uncomfortable but still trying to have this conversation anyway. “It’s complicated.”

“Try to explain?” Joe asked, almost pleaded. He wanted to understand. He saw Nicky thinking, trying to find the right words. He looked so unhappy. Joe wondered if he had ever talked about any of this out loud before.

“It’s a bad habit, I guess. We used to spend a lot of time together, the four of us. He gets along fine with Andy and Nile but I usually set him off.”

“That’s not your fault,” Joe said quietly, because it felt like it needed to be said and because he needed to see if Nicky knew that.

Nicky shook his head. “No. It’s not. But the first time he took it out on me, I figured I could take it and maybe he’d feel better afterward. And he did. For a while.” He shrugged. “And it’s not like he can actually kill me.”

“So, he hurts you and it makes him feel better?”

Nicky paused, frowning at the road. “That sounds bad.”

“Yeah, it does,” Joe agreed. Another stretch of silence. “But you told him no this time.”

Nicky swore under his breath in Italian and glanced sideways at Joe. “How long were you there?”

Joe thought about hedging the answer and saying something like “long enough” but there wasn’t any conversation he wanted to avoid with Nicky. “He said you only wanted me because you were lonely. And you said if that had been true you wouldn’t have turned him down.” His heart had beat faster at that, both at the idea that Nicky wanted him and again at the confirmation he wasn’t with Booker—not that he’d ever suspected they were.

Nicky swore again. He’d driven so fast through the empty morning roads of that rural area that they were already pulling into the little town. He had to hit the breaks to bring them back down to a legal speed and not alarm any of the townsfolk. “I apologize,” Nicky said tightly. “He was trying to get under my skin. Any offense wasn’t meant for you.”

Joe blinked, almost surprised out of his original focus on being angry at Booker. “Offense?”

Nicky parked the car in front of a little café just opening up. He didn’t answer Joe, getting out of the car instead. “I need coffee,” he said. “Do you mind if we sit here for a while before heading back?”

Joe followed him up to the glass door, more than happy to sit alone with Nicky in a café. “Can I ask a couple more questions?”

Nicky smirked. “Only a couple?”

“Only a couple more about this, right now,” he tacked on the “right now” just in case.

Nicky shrugged, ordering coffee in German. He got a latte and waited for Joe to order his black coffee, in English because he did not know German, before picking out some pastries. Nicky had a sweet tooth. When they sat down, Nicky nodded and waved as though inviting the questions.

“Why did you decide not to let him take it out on you anymore? Why now?”

Nicky sighed but settled into his seat across from Joe. He wouldn’t lie to him. Joe knew that even before he had asked. “It’s not healthy. Not for him. And I didn’t want you to see it. I didn’t want you to think it was okay. I didn’t want it to spill over onto you.” He looked down at his coffee, almost stopped there and then added quietly. “I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

Joe’s heart almost exploded. He would, of course, revive if it had. Nicky cared what he thought of him. “I don’t.”

Nicky glanced up at him, the lift of his brow casually doubting his words.

“You let someone else hurt you in hopes that it would make them feel better. I mean, it’s a terrible idea and I’d really rather you never do that again, but it doesn’t make me think worse of you, Nicolo.”

Nicky straightened a little. Joe had noticed how he reacted when he used his real name. A little color in his cheeks when he sipped his coffee. He waved his hand again, waiting for the second question and to move on from this subject.

Joe wasn’t sure he’d be any more prepared for the second but went for it anyway. “Why did you turn down Booker all those years ago?”

Nicky coughed on his coffee and actually laughed, eyes full of humor when he apologized and put his cup down. “What? You’ve met him, right?”

Joe smiled, Nicky’s amusement wildly infectious to him. He nodded. “Yeah. But you have been on your own for a long time.”

Nicky shrugged, still smiling. “A long time is still a long time with someone you don’t love. What would have been the point?”

“Comfort? Enjoyment? Release?” Joe said the last word low and enjoyed the way Nicky blushed and looked away. How could a man almost a thousand years old still blush like that?

“I’ve tried just having comfort. It just felt hollow and I felt more alone after than before.” He shrugged like he could push those words away once they’d escaped him. He nudged the plate of pastries across the table toward Joe, urging him to pick first.

Joe took the flakey lemon pastry and thought about what he’d said for a while. He supposed that explained why Nicky didn’t have a bevy of romantic and sexual stories to trade with the others. He wanted something more and hadn’t found it. “Do you want me?” Joe asked, never afraid of being bold.

Nicky did not seem as caught off guard this time, his cup pausing only briefly between the table and his mouth. He eyed Joe, looking him over and making Joe’s heart race a little. And then Nicky sipped his coffee and replied, “You already used up your questions.”

Joe laughed but nodded, because that was an answer of sorts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, i'm obviously not following the movie timeline here and Booker is MORE of a timebomb of issues than normal. i managed not to have the "only one bed" trope this time! no promises for the next chapter though...
> 
> ps. this is the slowest slow burn thing i think i have ever written. i know it's not REALLY very slow but it's agony for me. sweet sweet agony. i don't know how much longer i can slow burn, it might catch on fire soon. i might have to up the rating...


	4. Flirting

It wasn’t that Nicky had never flirted.

Or maybe that was exactly it. He hadn’t exactly been born to a very flirty time and place. He had been flirted with plenty of times over his nine-hundred years and in those first hundred even tried flirting back a few times. And yet, this was different. Joe was something else entirely.

Nicky was very pleased with himself for not dropping his coffee when Joe asked if he wanted him. God, why did he even say it like that? Luckily, he had gotten enough shock questions in for Nicky to guess where this was going—hoped it wouldn’t, but suspected it would. Why did Booker have to be such a loud asshole?

But Joe didn’t ask if he was interested in him like it bothered or offended him, quite the opposite. So, Nicky sipped his coffee and opted out of answering directly. He hadn’t lied to Joe yet and would rather not but some part of his brain, that sane part no doubt, was screaming at him that this was a bad idea. Maybe Joe was just a flirty person? He was incredibly charismatic. So why not? Well, he hadn’t talked to anyone else in the family quite the way he did Nicky, at least not as far as he saw, but that could be wishful thinking, couldn’t it? And even if he was really interested, Nicky still couldn’t let himself get involved like that. It could mess up the family. What if he was taking advantage of Joe? He was new. That had to have emotional ramifications, right? What if he felt like he owed Nicky something for finding him? That would explain this. The thought was enough to make even his latte bitter.

“Nicky?” Joe said, sounding worried.

“Hm?” Nicky blinked. _Fuck_. He’d stopped listening. He never stopped paying attention to what was going on around him.

“You okay?”

Nicky nodded. “Yes. Sorry. What did you say?”

Joe watched him carefully, the way he always seemed to. Nicky felt like a book being read, like his thoughts were going to be heard. It was uncomfortable but thrilling. It made it hard to look directly at Joe though, like he would give things away that would somehow change the way Joe looked at him. “Who was your first love?”

“What?” Nicky laughed without meaning to. That could not have been what he asked before. Nicky was sure a question like that would have cut through even his own mental fog. “Who was yours?” he countered, hoping it would put an end to this conversation. He needed to find a way to steer them out of romantic conversations and toward someplace safer. Unfortunately, he was not as good at this as Joe, so the conversation had a habit of going wherever the other man wanted.

Joe smiled, finishing his pastry and leaning back into his seat. He looked almost smug to have been asked. “Well, setting aside all childhood crushes and cartoon characters.”

“ _Cartoon_?”

Joe waved a hand and continued. “I moved around a lot though, so most of my relationships were casual,” he frowned a little when he said it, like he didn’t like it now that it was coming out of his mouth but he couldn’t stop it either. “I think I’ve had flames but not loves. Does that make sense?”

“No,” Nicky smirked against the lip of his coffee and drank.

Joe smiled and stared, waiting.

Damn it. Give and take.

* * *

“Love?” Nicky asked, like he was getting the lines of the question so that he could sculpt a perfectly honest but limited answer.

Joe nodded, waiting, sipping his coffee. He would take information about Nicky from Nicky in any dose he could get. If he had to chip it away in little careful answers at a time, he would. He had plenty of time, didn’t he?

“I have loved some people. Andy, Quynh, and Nile,” Nicky answered.

“But not romantically?”

“No,” Nicky admitted.

“Flames then?” Joe nudged. He didn’t need to wonder why he felt so relieved that there was no great love in Nicky’s past, but that past was so long, the idea seemed almost impossible.

Nicky wrinkled his nose. “I would not dignify them with that title.”

Joe wasn’t sure what to make of that. “Bad relationships?” He couldn’t help but think about Booker, even if that wasn’t romantic, it suggested Nicky wouldn’t think much of letting someone mistreat him.

Nicky sighed like something he didn’t much like had been uncapped. Joe couldn’t help but feel a little flattered that Nicky never failed to at least try to answer the questions he threw his way. He could just say no. He could lie. “I was trying to find something. They were rare and never lasted more than a night.” Nicky shrugged, glancing at their finished coffees. “I have to pick up some groceries. Do you want me to drive you back first—”

“No, I’ll go with,” Joe decided, rising from his seat when Nicky did. Joe caught the door and Nicky smiled at the barista and thanked her again in German.

They walked to the grocery store down the long street, it seemed to be the main road of the town. “You’re usually on food duty?” Joe thought aloud.

Nicky looked surprised and then seemed to think about it and nod. “I guess so.” And then he smiled a little wryly. “You starve a few times and you’ll be a little preoccupied with filling refrigerators too. Grocery stores are a wonder.”

Joe wasn’t sure where to start with that—the idea of grocery stores being amazing or the times Nicky had starved. He was pretty sure he knew the feeling to some degree, after a few days in the desert. But when he goaded Nicky into telling him about those times in the aisles of the grocery store—they had slipped into Italian in hopes of not disturbing anyone else—it turned out Joe had no idea what starving really was and decided Nicky’s habit of feeding everyone was a good one. He wouldn’t mind avoiding that particular death.

It wasn’t until they were in the car that Joe twisted toward Nicky and asked, “Have you ever been eaten?”

Nicky raised and eyebrow and side-eyed him before looking at the road again. “What are you talking about now?”

Joe paused, smiling when he wondered if Nicky was making a inuendo joke. “I meant, like, by a lion or something.”

Nicky frowned almost dramatically. “Oh. Yeah, that’s not a good way to go.”

“So, you were eaten by a lion?” Joe repeated, to clarify.

“Not a lion and it was really more of a mauling. Andy killed the bear before it actually ate me.”

“A bear,” he repeated.

Nicky smirked. “Sure. But Nile was once killed by a crocodile. I had to go in and drag her body out and almost drowned myself. And Quynh would not stop with the Nile Crocodile jokes for what felt like a hundred years.”

They didn’t talk about Quynh much in the house around Andy, but Nicky mentioned her to Joe pretty often—whenever she came up, rather than trying to avoid her like the others did. Joe wondered if it was because she was attached to so many of his favorite stories or because he didn’t want to forget the way the others did. Or maybe it was a mix of both?

“Andy and Quynh were a couple?” Joe asked softly.

Nicky glanced at him but nodded. “Yeah. For a long time.”

“And now, Andy and Nile?” Joe had wondered. They were all so close with each other at home it was almost impossible to guess.

Nicky wrinkled his nose. “Not exactly. I mean, yes, they sleep together sometimes, but Nile has always been affectionate and free. And Andy has always been something wild. They fit well together but they’re not exactly a couple.”

Joe nodded, thinking that made sense.

When they got to the house there was another car parked out front. Joe tensed, reaching for the glove compartment and the gun he stashed there. Nicky touched his arm to stop him. “It’s Andy. She went to run a few errands while the rest of us were cleaning up.”

Joe relaxed, nodding. “Okay.” He liked the way Nicky’s hand lingered on his arm while he parked, like he forgot it was there.

When they got out of the car, the front door opened and Nile bound out. “Nicky!” she called, smiling. She ran that short distance to them and threw herself into Nicky’s arms, who caught her with the care and precision of having done it a thousand times. Maybe more. “Andy said she was going to get supplies but she just got whiskey and I am so hungry!”

Nicky smiled, hugging her back until she let him go. “I’ll make lunch.”

She cheered and swatted his hands away when he reached for the groceries. “Cook doesn’t help!” She bumped hips with Joe, taking the box from his arms and nudging her chin toward the one still in the back, like a conspiratorial “get it before he does”. Joe did, reveling in that familiarity and easy affection. He’d never had much of a family himself. His parents had passed away and he and his brother were far from close. He’d always made friends easily, but this was different.

They went inside.

Andy was on the couch, seemingly sleeping though no one tried to be quiet—trusting that if she wanted quiet she would tell them all to get the fuck out of her space.

Nile and Joe put groceries away while Nicky grabbed the things he needed for making lunch.

“How long?” Nile asked. It wasn’t impatient, more strategic.

Nicky shrugged. “An hour.”

Nile nodded and then grinned at Joe. “Want to be my sparring partner?”

Joe blinked. He had trained with her plenty of times now. Nile was a ball of energy and somehow made even getting beat up fun. “Sure. Right here in the kitchen?” he asked, keeping his tone deadpan so she had to take a second to decide if he was joking.

“Your funny,” she back peddled toward the hall. “Get changed! I’ll meet you out back!”

Joe laughed but nodded, watching her disappear around the corner. He lingered in the kitchen, turning to see Nicky smiling to himself while he laid out a cutting board. “You don’t need help?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. Joe suspected there were very few things Nicky needed help with, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find those things and be the one to help.

Nicky shook his head, still smiling. He looked honestly happy. “No. Go have fun.” He said and then reached out and caught Joe’s wrist. Joe looked at his hand there and then back at Nicky. “Don’t let her push you into the orchard—it’s one of her strategies out here,” he whispered, no doubt giving away Nile’s plan. Joe couldn’t help but smile when Nicky favored him. His hand turned and Nicky made to let go of his wrist at the small gesture, but Joe caught his hand in his. He held on for a few seconds, long enough to get Nicky to look at him again, that surprise stilling his features. Why did Nicky still look surprised? He had to know he liked him, right? How much more obvious could Joe be? He supposed he could be completely obvious. That would do the job.

He tugged Nicky’s hand a little, drawing him a step closer and marveling at how the man’s breath caught in his throat, his whole body tense and his gaze barely meeting Joe’s before flicking to his shoulder and this lips and then back to his shoulder. Joe smiled softly, because Nicky hadn’t let go of his hand yet either. Joe leaned in, slow enough to make sure Nicky had ever opportunity to pull back, let go, or say no. And then he kissed him. It wasn’t exactly chaste, but it was soft and slow, and when he broke it and leaned back, Nicky was slow to open his eyes.

It was hugely gratifying, especially when Nicky did open his eyes and for a second look at him like he was something previously unimagined, like magic. He made him feel amazing, like his blood was on fire. He wanted more but forced himself to take a step back. Andy was on the couch right over there, after all, even if she was asleep.

“Hurry up!” Nile called from the back of the house.

Nicky was still blinking at him, a blush creeping over his face. He tore his gaze away and let go of his hand. He went back to prepping lunch and Joe went down the hall to get changed.

Nile had voiced how much she liked this particular safehouse because of all the rooms—and finally getting one to herself. Joe had nodded along, silently disappointed when he was shown to one of his own. Up until now, even if he hadn’t always gotten to bunk with Nicky, he had at least been sleeping in the same room, car, train, or warehouse.

He stood in the quiet room with its one too large bed and his bag of clothes. He didn’t like it any more than he had this morning, but with the taste of Nicky still on his lips, it was hard to care about that right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a slow SLOW burn! But we're getting closer to stuff...


	5. One Kiss Too Many

Joe struggled to pay attention in the yard, sparring with Nile, and she did indeed drive him into the orchard where she seemed to have memorized the distance between trees, dancing around them. When he finally got the upperhand and got ahold of her, he managed to lift her up, throw her over his shoulder, and march her back out to the long grass and weeds off the back of the house. She punched him soundly in the back and kneed him in the chest, practically kicking off of him and back to her own feet before launching at him again.

He ended up on his back in the grass with the petite monster on his chest. She was triumphant and winded and they called a truce in favor of food. Joe couldn’t imagine ever guessing Nile was more than twenty-five, max, let alone nearly a thousand years old. And just when he was busy marveling at that, she leaned over him and kissed him.

It was unexpected to say the least and he was frozen for a second, wondering if this was just friendly—nope, there was her tongue. He tried to jerk back first but his head was already to the ground. He caught her shoulders and gently pushed her back. She blinked down at him curiously, like he’d interrupted a conversation.

Joe smiled. “I’m gay,” he said, kind of surprised she didn’t know. Maybe he’d been too focused on learning about them and about getting closer to Nicky? It was easy to take for granted that they had only just met a few weeks ago. Nile often felt like someone he’d known for years.

“Oh.” Nile said, thought about it for a second and then hopped up. “Sorry about that,” she laughed, offering her hand to help him up and maybe to make peace.

But peace had never been lost. He took her hand and stood, stretching on their way back to the house.

* * *

Nicky cut his hand three times just slicing vegetables. Luckily, he healed almost as fast as the damage was done. He had to stop for a minute, put the knife down, and just think. But he _couldn’t_ think. All he could do was remember the way Joe had held his hand and leaned in and…

Nicky hadn’t been kissed like that in centuries and even then, it had never felt like that. He had never felt riled like this. It was a miracle he managed to make the damn quiche and didn’t just give up and scramble some eggs.

When it went into the oven he cleaned up and then just stood there, trying to figure out what to do with himself. That was the issue wasn’t it? What was he doing? What was he supposed to do? What did he want to do? Oh, no, want was too easy a question. And it immediately reminded him of Joe had asked, _“Do you want me?”_

He groaned and leaned forward, pressing his forehead to the island counter.

“Are you okay?” Andy asked from the couch on the other side of the living room.

He opened his eyes but didn’t lift his head from the cool press of the tiles. “Yes,” he lied.

She snorted. “Food smells good.”

“Thanks.” He stood up and almost rolled his eyes when he saw Booker coming down the hall, no doubt drawn by the smell of food. His hair was wet, so at least he’d showered.

He met Nicky’s gaze briefly and then hung his head. Oh, good, he was in the shame phase of his bullshit wheel.

He came over and sat in one of the barstools across from Nicky. “I’m sorry, Nick,” Booker said in French, voice gravely. He still didn’t like the way Booker said his name, but at least he wasn’t trying to pick a fight anymore. “I was being a dick and you’re right, I’ll get my shit together.”

Nicky poured a glass of water and put it in front of him. He was like a shitty brother. He was a burden, but Nicky couldn’t exactly get rid of him either. Booker usually apologized after his fits. It was interesting to find out that the apology was about the same, whether the beating was verbal, physical, resulting in Nicky’s death, or, like today, ending in Nicky’s favor. Maybe he should try beating up Booker next time? Maybe Booker would feel better then? Nicky mused on it but knew he wouldn’t. He didn’t really have the heart for it.

Booker drank the water. “And I’m sorry about accusing you of, whatever, with Joe. I don’t know why I thought…I mean, I saw him out back with Nile,” he said, using his fingers to comb his wet hair back from his face.

Nicky stopped dead in the kitchen, glancing up at Booker. He could read him easy—always could. He wasn’t fishing for soft spots. He was still in apology mode. “Saw what?”

Booker finished the water and put the glass back on the counter. “Kissing. It makes sense, I guess. Nile’s lively as all hell and that kid’s barely dead.”

Nicky would usually have thought on how he hated the way Booker talked about their existence—like they were zombies—but his mind struggled to get past the first part. Booker wasn’t lying. But maybe he thought he’d seen something he hadn’t? Or maybe he had seen exactly what he thought? Maybe it was just friendly? Maybe it was more? Nicky realized it could be anything. They hadn’t talked about anything and Joe was so charismatic. So was Nile. It made sense. He winced, Bookers words lodging into his own thoughts. It made sense. They were alive.

“What?” Booker asked, sounding more alert now. That was dangerous.

Nicky looked up and hated the way those grim eyes saw into him for a moment—for the worst moment.

Booker broke into a slow smile, like a wolf scenting blood. “You really did like him,” he exhaled, little more than a whisper but it hurt so much.

Nicky was used to a lot of different pains, but not this. This was uncomfortable and exposing and…

Booker laughed and Nicky settled his own features, rolled his eyes and went back to pulling the food out of the oven.

It had been a nice kiss. The memory was one of the sweetest things Nicky could conjure, that would be enough. He could be okay with that. He could be happy for whatever happiness or peace Joe and Nile found with each other, if they did. He just wouldn’t be a part of that. He couldn’t. He knew himself well enough by now to know that he wasn’t made of casual love. He had known this thing with Joe was a bad idea, hadn’t he? He had known he wasn’t right someone so bright and warm.

But it had been a nice idea.

When Nile and Joe came in, newly showered and changed after training, Nicky smiled and served up lunch, but he didn’t quite look at them, afraid someone would see through him again. Afraid Joe would see. He surprised himself when he looked at his food but couldn’t eat it. He wanted to keep the taste of Joe on his lips just a little bit longer.

* * *

Something was off with Nicky all afternoon, not that it was noticeable to anyone but Joe. He wouldn’t look at him for long and when he did, Nicky’s expression was so careful—polite but distant. And he didn’t eat. He made this amazing food and then didn’t eat and Joe _knew_ that Nicky liked food.

But all afternoon and into the evening, he never had a chance to ask him about it, not alone anyway. And he hesitated to bring up personal questions directed at Nicky in front of everyone. He didn’t think Joe would like that much attention.

So, he spent the evening hanging out with the group, watching how Nicky had planted himself between the arm of the couch and Andy. She leaned against him easily, the two whispering and making each other laugh in little huffs.

Booker was even lighter in his mood than he’d been in at least a week, not that Joe was sure how to feel about that. At one point in the evening, they were alone together in the kitchen area and Booker grunted an apology. Joe looked at him, remembered his hands around Nicky’s throat, and then grabbed the beer he’d come for and went back to the group in the living room.

Joe laid awake most of the night replaying the moment he kissed Nicky in the kitchen, wondering if he’d misread it. Had he crossed some line? Nicky had looked…okay. But he had been unhappy, Joe was sure of that. He could feel it, like an absence of heat in the room.

When he finally fell asleep it was fitful and uneasy. What if Nicky hadn’t wanted him to kiss him? What if he’d misread the whole thing? Fuck.

When he finally got up and dressed, he was surprised to realize he wasn’t the only one awake.

Nile had a bunch of guns taken apart and laid out on towels on the dining table, meticulously cleaning them. Booker walked in through the front door, yawning. “I’m going to bed,” he said, like he hadn’t yet even though the sun was rising.

Nile flashed Joe a smile when she saw him and then read the question on his face. “Andy had us up early. She’s working on the next job already. I thought we’d let you sleep.”

Booker snorted on his way past her table. “Aren’t you romantic.”

Nile raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you still drunk?”

Booker smirked. “I saw you two. You know, you have a room, right?” he passed Joe on his way to the hall, aiming for his own room. He laughed darkly, the sound tired but amused. “Nick had no idea.”

Joe stopped at those words, looking back just in time to watch Booker disappear into his room. Oh shit. _That_ was it? _That_ was why Nicky had been off? If it was, it definitely meant Nicky liked him, but it also meant he’d inadvertently hurt him.

He went straight for Nicky’s bedroom and didn’t even knock, opening the door and leaning in. He had already suspected Nicky wouldn’t be there. If everyone else was up and about, Nicky would have been too. But he felt his chest tighten when he saw that perfectly made bed, the room in order, lamps turned out, and no bag in the corner.

He hurried back to the living room and straight for Nile. “Where’s Nicky?”

“Andy sent him to do reconnaissance on these human traffickers in Bangkok.” Nile groaned. “Boring shit. Takes weeks of basically stalking people and taking notes.”

Weeks. “Did he already leave?”

Nile looked up, surprised out of her own work. She stared at him, as though realizing something.

He might have blushed or looked away if he was at all embarrassed, but he wasn’t.

“Yeah. Andy told him to go this morning, had him on a train hours ago. He usually does that stuff,” she spoke carefully now, like she was choosing her words. “He sends the info to Andy when he checks in.”

“How often does he check in?” Joe wasn’t really sure why he was asking. That wasn’t what he wanted to know. He wanted to know exactly where Nicky was so he could go too.

Nile put the gun she was cleaning down. “Maybe once a week? Or if he finds something important.” She studied him and he could see her thinking about him and Nicky, considering all the information she had. And then her expression softened, like he was the one that had misunderstood something. “I get why you’d like Nicky, he’s amazing, but he’s not…” She frowned, honestly trying to figure out how to explain this. He knew she loved Nicky, they were family, so he tried not to bristle. “I’ve known him for a really long time, Joe. Like, a looooong time,” she said with a smile but it pulled a little with sadness. “I’ve never known him to be with anyone. You might be barking up the wrong tree.”

Joe stared at her for another second. She didn’t even know if Nicky had ever been with anyone. Which either meant she’d never asked, which he doubted, or that Nicky had never talked about it. But he hadn’t avoided answering those questions when Joe asked. “Where is he?” he asked again.

She straightened, surprised. And then there was a look of honest worry. Her gaze cutting from him past his shoulder, in the direction Booker had gone, maybe remembering what he had said. “Are you and Nicky…?”

“Something,” he said, because that was as close to the truth right now. They were something, he was sure of that now. Nicky had kissed him back in the kitchen, eyes lingering shut, and he had been hurt when he thought Joe had also kissed Nile, and he had told him things he had not told people he’d spent centuries with. They were something.

There was something close to tears in her eyes when her hand flew to her own mouth, fingertips touching her lips. “Oh my god,” she mumbled against them.

“Nile,” Joe said gently, patience straining but he thought he’d always be able to find some of it for her. She was family, after all. “Where exactly is he going?”

* * *

Nicky had found a good perch the other day, across from the main warehouse in a loft of a mostly abandoned building. There were a few shops on the first floor facing the other side, the upper floors had been turned into storage units and this last one left gutted with plastic tarps and exposed piping.

Nicky had found a room with chunks of the wall missing and hollowed out window panes. Nicky lay on his chest, watching the building across the street through high powered binoculars, his sniper rifle set up along side it, just in case. Sometimes these things turned out to not be the center of activity anticipated and the whole family wasn’t needed. Sometimes Nicky and a rifle could do the job fine enough.

He glanced at his watch and sighed, pulling the phone from his pack and calling Andy to check in, as agreed. He had dreaded calling in and put it off as far as he could. If we went another day she’d be the one calling him and it was so rare that he’d push it to that, she’d probably be worry. Nicky didn’t want that. He also just really didn’t want to think about Joe more than he already did. It was preoccupying. He had imagined that being sent away for a while was probably for the best—that he’d get perspective and distance and recenter himself. But it turned out his center was bullshit and he didn’t want to be there. He wanted to be wherever Joe was. And that was terrifyingly childish for a man his age.

Andy answer. “You’re alive,” she said in a flat tone.

“I am alive,” he agreed. He told her the details so far. His set up, the numbers of targets using the building across the way, confirmation that it was a storage unit for some arms dealing and an office of some kind.

“Are you set up okay?”

Nicky frowned. That was a weird question. She didn’t usually stall or ask things like that unless she was worried about something. “Yeah…Nights are warm. Sky’s clear. Why—"

Nile started up in the background on Andy’s end of the call. “Is that Nicky? Give me the phone!”

There was a minor scuffle on the other end. Nicky sighed to himself, closing his eyes and dropping his forehead to the sleeping bag under him on the floor. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to Nile right now. It was petty and he hated himself for that. It wasn’t her fault. And he wanted everything for her. But he had a bruise on his heart, which he thought was kind of beautiful on its own, just because he hadn’t known that could happen anymore.

“Nicolo!” Nile practically shouted and that made his muscles jump. His name sounded like distress and sadness in her mouth—like regret and worry. It harkened to centuries long ago and it was usually how she said his name when she was really upset. “I didn’t know!”

He stared out the hole in the wall at the warehouse across the street blankly. “What are you talking about? Are you okay?”

“What? I’m fine! I’m just a complete asshole!”

“You’re not. What are you talking about?” He could hear Andy mumbling something but couldn’t make it out.

Nile sighed heavily. “I didn’t know you two had something going on. I was just messing around but if I’d known you even had the slightest thought toward him I would never have—”

“Stop,” Nicky said, shaking his head even though she couldn’t see. He felt warm and embarrassed and like she’d opened a wound. She had just been messing around? Was that supposed to make him hurt less? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do whatever you want, Nile. I’ve got to go.”

“Nicky, wait,” she tried.

“I have to go,” he said again and hung up. He shoved the phone back into the bag. She would call back now that she had the number on Andy’s phone but it was silenced.

Nicky groaned, dropping his face forward into the bedding again. He had spent a lot of time on his own in his centuries, but the last couple days had felt like the first time he’d ever been alone. It was humbling, to say the least.

His nerves prickled up his spine and he inhaled a little, realizing he wasn’t alone. He’d fucked up. He moved fast, pulling the handgun out from under the bedding and rolling onto his back, taking aim near the door.

* * *

Joe had found Nicky’s perch the night before. It was really just a matter of figuring out where he would set himself up and then adjusting that plan for how Nicky might want things. And bam, there he was. He was more than a little proud of that—of finding him. So he didn’t even surprise him in the night.

He came back in the morning with coffee and a bag of food, because Nicky did not like to starve.

He stood perfectly still when Nicky realized he was there. It had only taken him a couple seconds and he moved fast. Joe briefly thought he should have put the coffees down. Could he get shot and not drop them? He would gloat if he did. But Nicky didn’t shoot him, in fact he jerked the gun away like his whole body reacted with a spasm the second he pointed the weapon at Joe.

Nicky took a deep breath and groaned, putting the gun away and sitting up. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

Joe was careful to stay out of the sightlines of the windows, even if this building was taller than most around it. He sat down beside Nicky in front of a patch of solid wall in an otherwise sketchy building. “We needed to talk,” he put the coffees down and then unlooped the bag of food from his wrist.

“What?” Nicky sounded completely confused. To be fair, Joe had kind of appeared out of nowhere and it seems he had not expected to be followed.

Joe checked the coffees and handed him the one with milk in it. Nicky took it almost absently, staring at Joe until their eyes met for a split second and then Nicky looked away, straightening where he sat. He could practically see Nicky thinking—trying to figure out what to say or do. He was fantastically cornered, literally stuck in this spot where they definitely could not speak loudly or make a scene or be storming off from. Joe would have felt like a jerk if he weren’t so pleased with himself.

He shifted toward Nicky, their knees brushing. Nicky jumped a little, trying to create space out of nothing. He had never done that before and they had shared the worlds smallest bed. “I don’t have anything going on with Nile,” Joe said bluntly, because being blunt had worked pretty damn well with Nicky so far. “I’m into men, in case that wasn’t clear, particularly the Nicky ones.” He relished the way Nicky’s eyes widened at that, his pulse jumping in his throat. “She kissed me and I told her I wasn’t interested and that was it.”

Nicky exhaled slowly, like he was trying to hide the relief, his gaze on the to-go coffee cup in his hand. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said quietly, and Joe wondered if he heard the regret dressing his own words or not.

“Tell me why?” Joe prompted, sipping his own coffee and waiting.

Nicky was trying to harden his features. Joe could see him doing it. But there were ripples of pain under that mask. “It could mess with the team dynamics,” he suggested to his cup.

“You said Andy and Quynh were a couple. Did that mess things up?” He kept his voice soft, not just because they were supposed to be staying unnoticed. He had thought all of this through too.

“No,” Nicky admitted. His gaze wandered up to Joe’s. There was an ocean of feeling there, with dangerous currents. “You’re young.”

Joe laughed a little. “Not really. And, eventually, I’ll be older than almost everyone else.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

That brought his smile back down, surprising him. He had thought through a lot of reasons Nicky might have for being unsure, but that hadn’t occurred to him. “You think this is because you found me?” he asked quietly. “That I feel a debt to you that could only be paid with sex?”

Nicky winced and Joe regretted being harsh with his words. “Is that what we’re talking about?” Nicky asked. “Sex?”

“Yes. And no. We’re talking about something more.”

Nicky sighed like Joe was talking in riddles, although Joe suspected Nicky was much better at riddles than this. He remembered how little even his immortal family had gleaned about Nicky, how little he had really shared, and was again moved at how much Nicky tried to communicate with him. If he ever doubted Nicky’s interest, all he had to think about was that.

“I’m not doing this because I owe you anything, Nicky,” he promised. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Nicky met his gaze again. “Then why?”

“Why?” Joe repeated, almost floored by the vastness of that question and all its implications. Why was he talking about it? Or why did he think it was a good idea? Or why did he want him? Joe’s heart stuttered on that last possibility, realizing that was probably it. Nicky had not exactly picked up on his very obviously hints and was still struggling when he laid it all out.

Joe put his coffee down and then placed his hand on Nicky’s knee. He leaned in, that short distance between them, and kissed him again. He had been craving that taste since the last time days ago, countries away. Nicky kiss him back, one hand touching Joe’s chest below his heart but not pushing him away. Nicky must have put his coffee down too because his other hand curled around the back of Joe’s neck, the kiss deepening. When he broke for air, he stared at the oceans in Nicky’s eyes. “You make my heart beat faster.”

Nicky sighed out a breath. “Maybe you’re afraid. I could kill you, you know.”

Joe grinned. “You could try.” Nicky’s hand was still cupping the back of his neck, fingers flexing but not to hurt, more like he was figuring out the feel of him. He wondered if Nicky would do that with every inch of him someday.

Nicky leaned in and kissed him again, and Joe knew that he made his heart beat faster too—he could practically hear it.

When they parted for air, he could see that Nicky looked unsure again, but it wasn’t about whether or not they were something—it was about what to do next. Joe leaned back those few inches, settling again in his place beside Nicky and picking up their coffees. He pushed Nicky’s back into his hands. “Breakfast?” he asked, nudging his chin toward the bag to encourage Nicky to dig through it and judge his selection.

Nicky exhaled some small relief, lips still swollen from kissing.

“Admit that you like me?” Joe asked in Italian.

“I like you,” Nicky replied immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More kissing! Thanks so much for all of the comments and enthusiasm, it is such a boost! 
> 
> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/search/domini%20boombeam)


	6. Torture

They slept in shifts so that one of them could keep an eye on the target building. Nicolo had been the first to sleep, lying on his back beside Joe who was on his chest, watching through the binoculars. Nicky never moved around in his sleep. He had been sleeping through wars his whole very long life, after all. But he woke up that day on his side, turned toward Joe, and holding on to his arm. He blinked at his own hand, like he didn’t recognize it. It was resting on Joe’s forearm, the other man still watching through the binoculars and casually sketching on the notebook. He could feel the muscles in Joe’s arm moving under his hand.

He let go, embarrassed that he’d reached out in his sleep, though Joe didn’t say anything about it.

“Anything interesting happen?” he asked, not looking right at him.

Joe shrugged. “People going in. People coming out. Nothing exciting. Definitely criminals though. Oh, and you talk in your sleep.”

Nicky startled, looking up.

Joe was waiting for his gaze, smirking. “Kidding.”

Nicky groaned.

“If you’re up, I’m going to get a little sleep,” Joe said. “Then we can figure out dinner.”

The shuffle to switch places without standing and risking being noticed made Nicky’s face warm. Joe didn’t touch him and Nicky was less than surprised to realize a part of him wished he had. What was happening to him? He settled on his chest, checking the gear while Joe settled onto his back beside him, eyes closing.

Nicky noticed the notebook then, the one meant for keeping track of activity and times. Joe had indeed kept track of things, along with sketching faces in the margins. He was very skilled. And… Nicky stared at the previously blank back page, now a sketch of Nicky sleeping. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a picture of himself before. Ever since photography started, they had the sense to avoid them. Andy had plenty of paintings of herself in the world, from a time before they started worrying about being found out for what they were.

Joe rolled onto his side, toward him, legs moving those few inches between them to hook one over the back of Nicky’s. Nicky’s breath caught, surprised how relieved he felt at that contact. A hand rested against his lower back.

“Nicolo?” Joe asked, sounding sleepy already.

“Hm?”

“Okay?” Joe whispered, the warmth of his hand soaking into his spine.

“Yes.”

* * *

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Nicky said grimly, his arms handcuffed behind his back. He spoke in Italian. Joe understood why. They had tested a few languages when they were being dragged across the street and down into the basement of the warehouse, saying some rude shit to these guys to see what languages they understood and what they didn’t. French and English had earned them gut punches when mothers were mentioned. Italian got no rise, even though Nicky had said some truly foul shit.

“You can’t really be blaming us getting captured on us having a thing,” Joe replied, following his lead on the language of choice. He was bound in much the same way, blood on the front of his shirt from where he’d head butted a guy on their way in.

“We were making out at the time…” Nicky reminded. The room they’d been stuffed into was little more than a large closet, shoved down to their asses and told to sit quiet or get a bullet to the head.

Okay, they had been making out and yes, there was a chance one of them would have heard the thugs coming sooner if Joe hadn’t been in Nicky’s lap, sucking his tongue, but Joe still wasn’t going to regret it and he was pretty sure they wouldn’t have been fucked even if they’d had the extra three seconds. “How many times have you been captured?”

Silence stretched and Joe wondered if Nicky was choosing not to answer, or counting.

“I doubt you were making out with someone every time that happened,” he went on.

“No. Definitely not.”

Joe turned to look at Nicky. “How much trouble are we in?” he asked seriously.

Nicky dropped his “this is a disaster” sulk and shrugged, somehow relaxing into his restraints. “Not much. But you might find out what it’s like to be electrocuted if they decide to torture us.”

Joe smirked. “Who says I’ve never been electrocuted?”

Nicky straightened, staring at him. “When?”

“I’ve been working as a mercenary since I was nineteen. I have been tortured before, Nicolo.”

Nicky looked abruptly serious. “Who?” he demanded.

Joe grinned, surprised by the level of deadly anger in the other man’s voice. “Can we call this our first date?”

Nicky swore, still in Italian, and looked away, but shifted to lean his shoulder into Joe’s. “I’m worried about your mental health.”

“You said I was handling all of this well,” he reminded.

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

Joe nudged Nicky’s boot with his. “How long before the others know we’re in trouble?”

Nicky frowned. “At least three days.”

Joe started, his amusement slipping. “You go three days without checking in?”

“Sure.”

“What if you get caught?” he demanded, squirming a little for example.

Nicky sighed. “I either escape, get killed and escape, or…wait it out.”

Joe frowned. “Wait it out?” he repeated.

Nicky looked bothered by that idea too, but probably not for the same reasons. “If you see an opportunity to get loose, take it.” He met his gaze, serious. “No heroic shit, just take it.”

Joe stared back at him. Nicky was completely serious. He actually expected Joe to cut and run if he got the chance. And he knew too that if he did leave Nicky behind, to god knows what, Nicky wouldn’t blame him for a second. It wouldn’t change anything between them. Not for Nicky anyway. “How can such a smart man be so stupid?” he wondered aloud.

A flash of surprise colored Nicky’s face before he settled on a frown.

There were voices in the hall, coming closer.

“If they separate us, don’t panic,” Nicky said quickly. “I will find you. Whatever happens, I will find you.”

Joe couldn’t help but smile. Nicky had no idea when he was being romantic.

The door opened and light poured into the little room. They both kicked when the men leaned in, grunting and swearing and dragging them out by their boots when they caught hold. They were dragged down a long hall and into another room where they were kicked a few times for good measure.

Joe didn’t feel the pangs of fear until he realized Nicky was being dragged away from him, he tried to follow, squirming, arms behind his back. A hand caught him by the back of the shirt, hauling him onto his knees and holding him there with a promise of getting his own turn.

They didn’t take Nicky far, lifting him onto a bench and tipping his head back over the edge, another man dragging a bucket of water in.

“Huh,” Nicky said, surprising Joe

“What?”

“I’ve never been waterboarded,” Nicky said in Italain, looking around, one of the men shoving his head back and throwing a cloth over his face.

Joe’s pulse jumped, muscles flexing, but he stayed where he was. Nicky wouldn’t die and he had survived so much worse. He had been telling him stories for weeks. So he forced himself to smile instead, to focus on the only part of this that didn’t hurt. “Nicky, are you saying this is going to be a first?”

“Hmm…” Nicky hummed.

The goons rotated between English and Thai, demanding to be told who they worked for, who had sent them, who they were. Between waterboardings, when Nicky gasped enough air to speak all he said was, “Don’t talk to them.”

Joe ground his teeth so hard his jaw ached and he tasted iron. At one point, Joe was pretty sure Nicky had died. He took too long to start breathing again and when he did it was with that returning jolt he had already seen too many times from the rest of the family. Nicky spit up water, smiled at his torturer and then laid back and waited for it to start again.

Joe laughed, the sound rich and dark even to his ear. Nicky was a monster and he loved it. He had heard him tell so many stories and believed every word of it, but until now he’d never really been able to visualize it.

After what felt like hours they shoved Nicky off the bench onto the floor. He wasn’t breathing again, eyes open but empty.

“Nicolo!” Joe snapped, hands dragging him forward, closer. He leaned as if to reach for him but his arms were still pinned behind his back.

Nicky coughed up water, blinking and groaning. “Here.”

Joe smiled. It was probably a little unhinged, when he was carried past Nicky and laid out on the bench. It was his turn. “How’d you like it?” he asked, pulse picking up again.

Nicky kicked at a man that tried to grab him but he was too tired to fight long or hard, pulled farther away and put on his knees where Joe had been before. He spit more water up from his lungs. “Not bad. I think I like this more than electrocution,” he deciding, still in Italian.

Joe was taking deep breaths. He glanced to the side at Nicky. “Really?” He’d experienced both before and had always felt the reverse.

“Wait until you die from electrocution, then we’ll talk.” Nicky smiled, but he could see the wear of it—the fear. It hadn’t been there when Nicky was the one being tortured and Joe realized he was a weakness Nicky had never experienced before.

Joe held his gaze as long as he could, until they put the cloth over his face. “Don’t talk to them,” he said, repeating Nicky’s words because even if Nicky knew how to keep his mouth shut when being tortured, even if Nicky had done this a thousand times before, he had never done it with Joe.

* * *

Nicky went through waves of regret and guilt watching Joe slowly drown. If he hadn’t followed him here, he wouldn’t be in this position. If Nicky hadn’t encouraged whatever was going on between them, he wouldn’t have followed. If Nicky had thought it through, he would have told Andy that he’d check in every day. It had been okay to risk being captured and tortured for a while when it was just him alone, but not now.

Nicky held his breath when Joe stopped breathing, his heart hammering in his skull and lungs burning. He winced when Joe spasmed back to life. These assholes had no idea how many times they would have killed him if he was mortal and they weren’t doing any better of a job with Joe. When they thought they’d killed Joe, letting up in a bought of half-hearted worry, Nicky started spitting insults. He had a loose handle on Thai, almost exclusively polite tourist talk and foul-mouthed offenses.

He hit a nerve and the three men rounded on him, momentarily abandoning Joe. He spasmed back to life behind them.

Nicky kept talking, shouting over the sound of Joe spitting up water and trying to rise to his feet, a man behind him shoving him down just before another slammed knuckles to his face, throwing him sideways onto the dirty concrete.

He tasted blood when a boot cracked his ribs, his vision blurring for a second. Through their legs he saw Joe moving, lifting his legs to pull his cuffed arms from behind his back to in front of him and then sitting up. He was so quiet when he wanted to be. The door was right there. _Run_ , Nicky thought but already knew he wouldn’t. He knew it, with equal levels of dread and awe.

Before anyone realized he was up, Joe was behind the guy driving his boot into Nicky’s chest. He looked arms around the guy’s neck and jerked him back, squeezing, twisting, and snapping spine.

Nicky groaned and pushed himself up, ribs pulling out of his lung and snapping back into place. The room turned into a mess brawl. Nicky was on his feet long enough to drive his shoulder into another guy, running him hard into the wall. He crouched long enough to roll his arms from back to front.

A gun went off, bullet catching Joe in the side before he pulled the guy he was struggling with in front of himself, using him as a human shield to collect the next three bullets.

Nicky rushed the shooter, took a bullet to the shoulder but reached the gun, twisting it out of the man’s hands, kicking his leg to drop him to his knees and then shooting him in the head.

The room went still.

Joe dropped the dead guy he’d been holding up and they booth took a few well needed, deep breaths.

“You didn’t run,” Nicky mumbled, spitting blood.

“No,” Joe agreed and started patted guys down, looking for the keys to their cuffs.

Nicky turned to watch him. He was still wet from being waterboarded and his shirt now bloodstained with a bullet hole in the side. “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Nicky muttered again.

Joe stood up, the keys in his hand, and stared back at Nicky. He crossed the room but instead of unlocking their cuffs, grabbed Nicky’s face and kissed him. Nicky kissed back. Every time felt like the first and the last and it was terrifying. “Did you want to be here alone?” Joe asked, their faces still close.

Nicky shook his head.

“Did you want me to be here alone?” Joe continued.

Nicky cringed and shook his head again.

Joe smiled, his knowing, flirty smile. “This,” he said, gesturing between their chests. “Isn’t a good idea or a bad idea, Nicolo. It just is.”

Nicky stared. Somehow, that made sense. What were the alternatives? Be apart? Not know if he’s okay? Nicky had always believed there was a reason he hadn’t died—that he had to keep moving and doing good—that fate had a plan. Didn’t that mean he was meant to find Joe?

Nicky twisted his fingers in the front of Joe’s shirt, tugging him in for another kiss. When he pushed him back, he held up his wrists, waiting to be uncuffed. “How’d you like drowning?”

Joe laughed, unlocking Nicky’s cuffs first. “Better than dying of exposure but not as smooth as a bullet.” He dropped Nicky’s cuffs on the floor and unlocked himself. “So, are we escaping or…?”

Nicky smiled, circling the room to seal weapons from dead men. He liked the way Joe said “or” like he preferred there be something more exciting and maybe a little vengeful. “Well, we’re already in the building. Might as well shoot our way to the top, see if there’s anything interesting in the office, and then burn the whole thing down.” He handed Joe a gun.

He check the weapon and then took a position by the door, smiling back at him. “Might as well,” he agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/search/domini%20boombeam)


	7. Steam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I changed this to "explicit" because I honestly don't know at what point sexy stuff slides from "mature" up to "explicit" and this way I feel like we're all warned that the metaphorical gloves are off. I don't think we're THERE yet, but might as well call it, it's only going to get more sexy from here.
> 
> Thanks for reading so far and I hope you enjoy this chapter too! <3

After collecting any information from the office and killing everyone with a gun in the building, Joe and Nicky had brought the whole thing down. They hadn’t exactly intended to flatten it, but it was old and less stable than expected.

* * *

The next afternoon, they reached a villa on the seaside in Malta.

Joe took a few steps into the villa and realized that this was different than any other safehouse he had seen, and he had been to at least six in the past couple months, not to mention hotels, motels, and Andy’s _cave of treasures_.

This places was clean, with big windows and walls of bookshelves. The stone-laid kitchen dominated the open room, the living room set up across from it near the glass doors that stepped out onto the terrace. Joe put his bag down and continued into the home. The kitchen was orderly, with quality pans and knives. And there was a prevailing scent in the house, subtle but he couldn't possibly miss it. It was what Nicky had smelled like when he found him in the desert.

“Nicky?” Joe asked curiously, looking at the shelves of books. “Is this your home?”

Nicky followed him in, closing the door and tossing his bag down, sliding a box of supplies onto the counter. “Yes. Andy’s going to meet us in Malta in a couple days. We can hang out here until then. It’s not a big place but there’s a guest room.” He gestured down the narrow hall.

Joe paused, still standing by the bookshelf. “Can I sleep in your room, Nicolo?” He asked in Italian, turning away from the books to see the other man’s reaction. He had taken to asking any questions he thought more intimately important in Italian—not just for privacy in public but also to make sure they were perfectly and easily understood. He wouldn’t want to think he’d tricked Nicky into anything. “I don’t mean to rush things. I won’t try anything. I just prefer to be close.”

Nicky stared back at him, the hint of a blush rising on his cheek when he looked away, nodding. “As you like,” he answered in Arabic.

Joe smiled a little at that, wondering if he was doing the same thing. He went back to looking at the books. Some of them looked ancient. “Nicky…This is really your house, isn’t it? It’s not a safehouse.”

“Hm? Yes. I mean, it is safe,” he added.

Joe resisting the urge to run his fingers along the spines of the books. “But these are your things?”

Nicky shrugged, crossing the room to him. “Yes. I bought this house a long time ago. It has been rebuilt once or twice. But I keep some things here.”

“And I was starting to think you weren’t sentimental,” Joe joked.

Nicky smiled a little and reached up onto one of the shelves. He pulled down a leather bound journal, holding it out to Joe. “Here. For you.”

Joe took the book, surprised. He flipped it open, the thick white pages all empty. He looked at Nicky again, confused.

Nicky was still standing close, still smiling back at him. “Fill it with your drawings and when you’re done we’ll put it back on the shelf.” Nicky shrugged and then turned and walked down the hall. “I’m going to shower first.”

Joe stared at the empty book in his hands. Fill it with drawings and put it back? He looked at the shelves of Nicky’s books, they were up to the ceiling and lining two walls of this room. And he was inviting him to leave something of his here? Joe’s heart beat a little faster. And then he noticed how many of the books were obviously novels while others were journals. He reached out and gently pulled one free, flipping it open at random and staring at the handwritten text filling the pages. It was Nicolo’s handwriting, different but still recognizable from the notes he’d kept in the reconnaissance journal. There were dates in the corners. It was an actual journal. Nicky’s journal.

He closed it and put it back carefully. He wanted to read it—wanted to read them all—but he wouldn’t without asking first even though he doubted Nicky would fault him for the intrusion. It didn’t seem to be in Nicky’s nature to fault people.

He put his new sketchbook down on one of the tables between couches and chairs and crossed the room. The hallways was short. There was one bathroom and two bedrooms on this side of the little house, both bedroom doors ajar. He paused at the first, all clean and welcoming, and then went to the second. More bookshelves, a wardrobe, a chest that looked like something antique, and a modest bed. It was Nicky’s room.

Joe went to the bathroom and knocked at the door.

After a second it popped open. Nicky stepped back, finishing stepping out of his boots and setting them aside. He had that look, asking Joe what was wrong without using words—just waiting.

Joe leaned against the doorframe. The bathroom was large, in dark stone tiles with a walk-in shower. “Has anyone else ever been here?”

Nicky looked away. “Someone comes here every other week to clean,” he said dismissively.

Joe stared, absorbing that.

Nicky sighed, uncomfortable. “Andy knows about it,” he assured, like Joe was worried about someone knowing where he was or like Nicky didn’t have the right to a secret.

“Can I shower with you?” Joe asked, surprising them both a little—Nicky a little bit more than himself.

* * *

Nicky couldn’t help but look directly at Joe again, for a second wondering if he could somehow have misunderstood him. But had spoken Italian again and he had not misunderstood. “Are you going to say you don’t mean to rush things and just want to be close?” he asked, paraphrasing Joe’s words about sleeping in his bed, with a small smirk. Trying to mask his own surprise. It wasn’t like they hadn’t cleaned up in close quarters before. They’d showered one after the other in a tiny bathroom in Thailand before getting out of the country the other night. But that wasn’t the same, was it?

Joe grinned. “No. But you could say no even if I did.”

Nicky looked him over before he could resist but fixed his gaze on the floor when he reached it. He felt his own pulse in his throat. “That’s not why I brought you here.” He had to say it. What if Joe thought he owed him something?

“Why did you bring me here?”

Nicky could feel Joe watching him. There was no accusation in his question—nothing about him that had ever suggested he felt obligated or uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” Nicky admitted, feeling embarrassed now. He hadn’t really thought about it. He had wanted to go home and he had wanted to take Joe here. Maybe he should have better thought it through. Maybe he should have taken them to a hotel instead.

“Do you want me to leave?” Joe asked. He sounded endlessly patient and it made Nicky feel childish—which was phenomenal at his age.

“No.”

Joe stepped into the bathroom, still watching him. “Would you mind if I showered with you?”

“No.”

Joe closed the door.

Nicky bit his lip and looked away when Joe leaned against the door to unlace his boots. Nicky had never been shy before. Even the handful of times he’d tried out sexual relationships, he hadn’t felt this nervous. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it into the plastic bag. They’d dump their clothes from traveling. The last time they’d showered had been rushed, mostly to get rid of the blood, and he still felt grimy. He finished stripping down, trying not to glance at Joe to see if he was still watching him. He’d seen him naked before. It shouldn’t matter.

Nicky stepped into the shower when Joe started undressing, turning on the water and adjusting the temperature. How many times in his life had he bathed with other people? With other men? So why was his pulse so loud he could practically hear it echoing off the tiles?

Joe stepped into the shower behind Nicky. Nicky closed his eyes, took a breath and then pushed his face under the spray of water, wetting his hair and then stepping aside to give the water to Joe.

Had he ever showered with someone he’d kissed before? He could pretend Andy and Nile counted but that had never been romantic. He had meticulously cleaned blood and gore from their hair plenty of times. Maybe this wasn’t different. Maybe he was just making a big deal out of nothing.

Nicky grabbed the bottle of soap from the built in ledge in the corner and popped the top, about to pour it into his other hand when Joe grabbed his wrist. It was electricity sliding up his arm to his shoulder. Joe tugged, suddenly standing right next to him, pulling the bottle close to his face to breathe in the scent of it.

Nicky stared. Joe was wet and naked and his fingers still wrapped around Nicky’s wrist. He was so close all he had to do was lean in and their hips would touch. Oh, this was definitely different than bathing with anyone else. His skin felt warm and it had nothing to do with the hot water or the steam. He wanted to lean closer even though there was so little space left between them.

* * *

“You picked this?” Joe asked.

Nicky watched him, nodding.

Joe remembered this scent from that first time Nicky found him, it had been in the car and then when they shared that tiny bed, it had been in Nicky’s hair. He let go of his wrist, taking the bottle. Nicky had leaned a little closer and Joe noticed, he had also noticed the way his breath had caught and his pulse jumped. “Turn around,” Joe said and loved the way Nicky’s body jerked a little at the words.

He poured the soap into his palm and put the bottle back, biting the inside of his lip when Nicky turned away from him.

There was something terrifying and thrilling about being trusted by Nicky. He tried to imagine if Nicky had offered everyone this much trust in the beginning, each person just wearing it down in their own way. Because he was certain that as easily as the trust was offered, it would disappear if betrayed. But even as kind as Nicky was, Joe doubted he’d ever trusted anyone the way he was trusting him. It was in the jump of his pulse and the surprise in his eyes. This was new. And Nicky might be nervous, but Joe wasn’t. He wasn’t going to fuck this up. He wasn’t going to fumble Nicky’s trust.

When Joe woke up in that desert, in a halo of his own blood and brain matter, he had been given days in the burning sun to think about his undead state. He had a purpose. And as certain as he was that part of his purpose in the world was to help Andy and the others fight battles and do their best to clear some of the monsters off the board, he also knew he was alive because Nicky was alive. Fate existed, they were proof of that already.

Joe rubbed his hands together, lathering the soap and then sliding his hands up Nicky’s back. The man exhaled and dropped his head forward. Joe explored him like that, under the guise of a purpose, running his hands over his arms and his back and his ribs and his hips. “Okay?” Joe asked. He suspected the answer—wouldn’t have touched him at all if he thought any differently—but it was still worth checking in. It reminded him of that first night on that tiny bed when he had hooked an arm around Nicky’s chest.

“Yes,” he answered in a breathy whisper.

Joe smiled to himself, got more soap, and started on Nicky’s hair. He tipped his head back into Joe’s hands, eyes closed, throat exposed. Joe almost groaned at how gratifying that was. Sure, Nicky was immortal, but that trust was still worth everything. He stood so close that his chest touched Nicky’s shoulder, his fingers carding through his hair, over his scalp, down his neck and then back up again. He used the press of his body to step him back under the shower spray, rinsing the soap off of him, but kept one hand curled around the back of Nicky’s neck, holding him in place and marveling at how easily Nicky let him lead.

Again, that terrifying and thrilling feeling cut from his gut to his heart. Nicky would let him do anything to him right now. Joe _knew_ it and it was as humbling as it was horrifying. It was a test, of course, even if Nicky didn’t know it—didn’t think of it that way. He would let Joe do anything he wanted to him tonight and then figure out his feelings about it after. And even though he could stop him, could kill him, Joe knew Nicky wouldn’t. Because he hadn’t stopped Booker from using him, even if that had been different than this.

So Joe moved slowly, studying every breath and shudder when he ran his free hand around Nicky’s ribs, to his chest. He kissed Nicky’s shoulder, watching him when he slid his hand slowly down his front. Nicky’s eyes were still closed, breath coming a little fast and lips parted. He groaned and leaned back against Joe when he touched his sex. Joe opened his mouth against Nicky’s shoulder, almost moaning himself at the feel of the other man’s erection against his palm. He wrapped his hand around him slowly. “Okay?” Joe breathed against his shoulder.

Nicky nodded tightly.

Joe smiled against his wet skin but didn’t move his hand yet. “Nicolo…” He needed to hear it.

“Yes,” he ground out, eyes opening. He met Joe’s gaze, his own hazy and a blush creeping over his cheeks, but he met his gaze all the same. “Yes.” One hand reached back to find Joe’s thigh, gliding up to his hip.

Joe held his gaze and started stroking him. Nicky reacted like a man who hadn’t been touched in years and distantly Joe realized that was true, but years was probably centuries. Nicky reached up and back with his free hand. Joe’s fingers flexed against his grip on the back of Nicky’s neck, his forearm running the line of his spine to keep him in place, but ready to let go if Nicky grabbed at that hand. Instead, Nicky squirmed, shoulder pushing back against Joe’s chest and arm curling back to palm the back of Joe’s head, fingers in his dark curls and spasming with his own waning control. Joe sighed at that touch, and the other hand gripping his hip, squeezing as though to keep him close—as though he would go anywhere else.

Nicky held his breath when he tried not to moan, like he would suffocate before letting it out. Joe bit lightly at his shoulder, surprising him into gasping and groaning. “It’s just us, Nicolo,” he said in Italian.

Nicky groaned. He let go of Joe’s hip, arm twisting behind himself, fingers searching until they brushed Joe’s erection. His hazy gaze found Joe’s, asking.

“Yes,” Joe said against Nicky’s shoulder, nodding, moaning when a hand wrapped around him. “Please.”

Nicky stroked and they writhed against each other, hips soon pumping into hands. Joe grinned when Nicky started swearing in different languages, some he couldn’t even begin to guess at.

Nicky held his breath again when he finished, body tight and arching against Joe’s grip on the back of his neck. If Joe could make coherent thoughts at the time, he would have decided to make it one of his life missions to get those sound out of Nicky, instead he let the sight and feel of the other man coming drag him over the edge too.

For long seconds they lingered, tangled, breathing.

And as soon as Nicky’s eyes opened again, Joe turned him around and kissed him. Kissed the water off his lips. Nicky’s hand slid over his side to his back, pulling him closer, kissing him deeper. When they finally detangled, they finished showering, exchanging sly smiles and carrying on what Joe thought was a fantastically mundane conversation about dinner options. Somehow, despite almost every day being in a new place with new situations thrown at him, Joe felt like this was normal—finally, after a life of looking for something that felt right, this felt steady.

He made a mental note to ask Nicky sex questions—the kind he was sure were going to make the other man blush. He even planned to wait until Nicky didn’t see it coming. He was definitely going to take advantage of however many days they had here before the others showed up in Malta.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/search/domini%20boombeam)


	8. Questions

“Can you tell me about your sexual encounters?” Joe asked casually after dinner when they had been sitting quietly in the living room for about an hour. Joe had been sketching and poking through one of Nicky's journals and Nicky had been reading, his legs across Joe's lap on the couch.

Nicky paused, the muscles in his legs tightened but his expression remained blank. Joe was going to have to make a point of having Nicky half across his body when he asked him questions. It was a good tell. “Why?”

“Curiosity.”

“Will you tell me about yours?”

“Of course.”

“Is that why you’re reading those?” Nicky asked, looking at the journal in Joe’s hands.

Joe had asked if it would be okay if he read some of the journals after they got out of the shower. Nicky hadn’t understood why he’d want to—had even explained they were just his own notes, something he had started more than five hundred years ago when he worried he was forgetting things. They weren’t meant to be entertaining or even read by anyone else. But that only thrilled Joe more. “Are your sexual exploits in here somewhere?” Joe asked, all charm.

Nicky snorted. “No. I only recorded things I worried about forgetting.”

Joe watched him, trying to pick his next question. He almost asked if the memories were so memorable they didn’t need writing down, but that might sound jealous and he didn’t want Nicky to feel like he couldn’t answer honestly. And he worried that wasn’t what Nicky had meant anyway. He suspected he meant they weren’t worth remembering. And that led Joe to glance at the shelves and wonder, if he would be in those journals someday. Would Nicky still let him read them, then?

Joe was surprised from his thoughts when Nicky took his hand, squeezing it lightly. His gaze was waiting when Joe looked up. “What exactly do you want to know?” he asked, an open invitation in his words.

Joe smiled. “Everything about you,” he confessed.

Nicky laughed low and went back to reading his book, but he hadn’t let go of Joe’s hand.

“What do you like or not like in bed?” Joe dove for it, before the conversation slipped.

Nicky smiled a little but pretended to read rather than look up at him. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Do whatever you like, Joe.”

Joe loved the way his name sounded on that tongue. He loved everything on that tongue. And the offer sent a jolt right from his brain to his sex, but it also set off a pain in his heart. He shook his head, lifting Nicky’s hand still clasping his to brush his lips against his knuckles. “No. That’s not how it works.”

Nicky glanced at him from the corner of his eye, a measure of skepticism and uncertainty there.

Joe nodded once, lips still to Nicky’s hand. They could figure this out. “You liked what we did in the shower?”

“Yes,” Nicky didn’t hesitate on that answer, hand spasming a little in his hold.

Joe smirked, kissing his knuckles again before lowering their hands Nicky’s legs across his lap. “How many times have you had sex?”

“Sex?”

Joe’s smirk turned into a full smile. Nicky had a habit of checking word choice. “Anything where you were not alone and at least one of you got off.”

Nicky frowned at that and Joe could see him recalculating. He shrugged, blushed, looked away. “Seven times.”

That wasn’t even once a century. Joe studied him. “Are you counting the shower today?”

“Yes.”

Joe nodded, stroking his thumb across the back of Nicky’s hand. “How many partners?”

“Seven.”

Joe waited. Nicky really wasn’t going to offer up information on his own. “Do you want me to stop asking?”

“No.”

Joe exhaled, relieved because he wasn’t really sure what his next move would be if Nicky said yes.

Nicky sighed, closing the book he wasn’t really reading anyway and setting it aside. “I understand it’s not what it should be,” he struggled to explain. “I’ve heard all of the stories Andy and Nile and Booker tell. I know the number should be higher. I know I should have stories to offer you or some expertise, but I do not. I can blame the first hundred years or so on dying and trying to survive wars but after that…I tried. I just never really met anyone I wanted. So, I tried with men that wanted me. It was not…” He sighed again and shook his head, eyes closed like he had a headache.

Joe’s heart ached. He slid closer, until he had Nicky’s thighs over his rather than his knees, one more scoot from just pulling him into a sit on his lap. He cupped the side of his face. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Nicolo,” he said in Italian. “Even if you didn’t like sex at all, that would be fine. We’re all different in our own ways. All I need, is for you to always tell me the truth—so that I know. Because if I hurt you, it would hurt me.”

Nicky opened his eyes, looking at him first in surprise and then in understanding. He nodded. “But I have not lied to you. I do not know what I like or do not like. I never wanted anyone before. And I never enjoyed affection from anyone I didn’t care about, and the only ones I cared about at all were Andy, Quynh, and Nile and that wasn’t the same. I didn’t want them like that.” He swallowed, hesitated, and then added in Arabic. “But I want you.”

Joe stared at him, humbled. He leaned in and kissed him, hoping to swallow those words and never forget them. Maybe later he’d write them in his sketch book under the drawing he had done of Nicky reading and stash it on Nicky’s bookshelf. With their foreheads still together he told him, “There’s nothing wrong with that.” They stayed like that for a while before Joe leaned back and smiled a little slyly at Nicky. “Can I still ask you about what things you’ve tried?”

Nicky groaned but it was playful. He picked his book up again. “You can always ask anything you like and I will always answer.” He went back to reading, allowing Joe to study him freely—not that he restrained himself from looking at Nicky much.

“What was your first sexual encounter?”

Nicky wrinkled his nose. “Another soldier. He had made advances before. I finally relented when the others weren’t around.”

“The others?” Joe asked.

“Andy, Quynh and Nile.”

Joe nodded. “And what did you two do?”

Nicky was still pretending to read but his muscles tensed. Joe had his hand on Nicky’s thigh, feeling every shift. “He wanted to have me. I let him.”

Joe wished then that Nicky had had some former lover that pleased him, just so he wouldn’t sound so uncomfortable about the subject. “Were they all like that?”

Nicky shrugged. “A few wanted me to use my mouth. I did.”

Joe realized why the careful tone of Nicky’s voice when he was saying these things made him so nervous—it sounded like he was confessing crimes. Did he feel guilty? He obviously wasn’t happy to tell the stories. “Nicolo,” Joe ventured carefully. “Do you feel bad about what you and I did in the shower?”

Nicky looked at him, eyes clear with surprise. “No.” He touched his cheek, smiling in a way that almost laughed at the idea.

Joe sighed a breath of relief. “Then why do you feel bad about the others?”

Nicky’s smile pressed back and his had fell away. “I didn’t like them. It didn’t feel right.” He shrugged. “What was your first time like?”

Joe was still recovering from the wonderful conclusion of Nicky’s words—that the others did not feel right, but that Joe did. “Senior year of high school. I was living with my older brother and his wife. One of his friends had been flirting with me for a while and came over when no one else was home.”

Nicky frowned. “That sounds…questionable.”

Joe laughed. “ _Mine_ sounds questionable?”

Nicky waited for more.

“He was nice. We had a good time. He did me but before we finished my brother walked in.” Joe was surprised himself when he paused. He hadn’t told anyone this story before but he had also never thought to hide it from Nicky either. It wouldn’t be fair. Nicky had always tried to be honest with him, even when he was obviously uncomfortable with it. “The guy bolted. My brother beat the shit out of me and said a lot of things. I was in the hospital for almost a week and no one ever came. When I got out, I went home and he had thrown all my stuff out and wouldn’t let me in.”

* * *

Nicky put his book down and stared at Joe. “What?” He had heard him. Of course he had, he was practically sitting in his lap, but the words were slow to fit into his mind. He shifted, turning so he wasn’t sprawled across Joe’s lap but sitting upright beside him, almost facing him. “Your brother put you in the hospital and then abandoned you there?”

Joe nodded and this time he was the one who looked away. He even shrugged. Nicky didn’t like that. He didn’t like any of this. “I did fine on my own. I stayed at a friend’s and then ended up in the military and then working for a security group, which led to a mercenary group, which ultimately led me to that last mercenary group and the desert.”

Nicky stared, suddenly realizing that this was how Joe made things okay. He had always explained things like that—one thing leading to another, leading him to where he wanted to be. Like all the bad things were made okay by the result.

He reached out and touched his arm, hand sliding down to hold his in his lap. “Want me to kill him?” he asked in Arabic, in his sweetest voice. It wasn’t really a joke though. He could easily find out Joe’s brother’s name and location. He had already found the mercenary group that shot him in the desert. The only reason he hadn’t killed them yet was because he wasn’t sure if it would be overstepping. What if Joe wanted to kill them himself? What if it was important to him that he let them live despite their crime?

“No. Please. I would rather just never see him again.” Joe smiled and it was beautiful. He leaned in and kissed Nicky and it made his heart swell and his skin warm.

Nicky had revived thousands of times, but never felt as alive as he did with Joe. “What about you then?” Nicky asked, offering the slight change of topic from murder back to sex—since that seemed to be Joe’s topic of the day. “What do you like in bed?”

Joe grinned and then bit it back, but didn’t look away this time. “I’d rather not tell you.”

Nicky sat up straighter, not sure if he was supposed to take offense or worry. “Why not? Is it something…extreme?” Nile had gotten into some pretty weird stuff in the 1900s. Even Andy had been impressed. While Nicky had just had the most erotic experience of his life doing hand jobs in a shower. But it was with Joe. Anything with Joe was bound to be amazing. He already couldn’t imagine there being anything he wouldn’t let Joe do—which might have scared him if he wasn’t also pretty sure Joe wouldn’t want to do anything that hurt him. He had said so, hadn’t he? And Nicky believed him.

Joe laughed. “No! No. I mean, nothing that involves props or anything. Just…” he was still laughed, shaking his head. He was so beautiful Nicky sometimes couldn’t keep looking and at the same time, couldn’t look away. He finally understood why moths flew into flames. “If I start throwing around ideas of what I like, you might lean into those rather than finding your own.”

Nicky raised an eyebrow. “Are you calling me sheep, Joe?” he asked in Arabic.

Joe turned his hand in Nicky’s, fingertips exploring his wrist. Did he know how distracting that was? “Never. But you don’t know what you like.”

“So?”

Joe hesitated, fingers flexing once against Nicky’s wrist. “Why did you let Booker hurt you?”

Nicky jerked his hand back like that touch, that wonderful touch, suddenly burned. He didn’t like the connection Joe was drawing. “That’s not this. I never…I turned him down.” His Arabic slipped back to Italian. He got up, a part of his brain screaming to stay on the couch where he was so perfectly close to Joe—probably not so much his brain as his body. But he needed the space. “We talked about this. I explained.”

Joe stood slowly. He looked hurt. Why? What could Nicky have done wrong? “I’m sorry,” Joe said.

Nicky froze, staring at him, completely confused now.

“I know it’s not the same. I know.” Joe touched his heart when he said it the second time and something in that gesture quieted the frantic unrest in Nicky’s own heart. “But you let him hurt you, for a long time, just to make him feel better. And I know that made sense to you at the time, that you could take it, but you don’t even like Booker.” Joe sighed, shoulders dropping and head tipping to the side. How could those eyes express so much? He was practically begging Nicky to listen and understand him. “And I know you like me.”

Nicky nodded once. Yes. Okay. He listened. And what Joe said was true but how did that relate too—

“Is there anything you wouldn’t let me do to you in bed right now, if I wanted to?”

Nicky stared at him. He knew the answer should be yes. Of course. But it wasn’t. He could think of a lot of awful things, things he definitely did not want to do, but he would still let Joe do it. _Fuck._ What was wrong with him?

Joe took a step forward and Nicky jerked a step back, looking away. He knew it wasn’t right that he’d let Booker hurt him. And he knew it wasn’t right that he would let Joe do anything he wanted. If it were anyone else he would be horrified for them. Peoples lives were worth more than that. And he couldn’t even blame it on immortality, because he would never be okay with Nile or Andy treating themselves that way.

Nicky backed away, head low, afraid of what he might see on Joe’s face if he looked up. His eyes burned. Was he going to cry? Shit. He turned and started for the door, not even hearing Joe calling him until his name came out _“Nicolo.”_ He had the door unlocked and was pulling it open when Joe’s hand pushed it shut, arm and chest caging Nicky in when he turned around to stare at him in surprise. “Don’t leave me,” Joe said and it came out so raw. Had he already said it once before when he was trying to stop him from going? There were tears in his eyes and something desperate. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have pushed. I shouldn’t have said anything. I—”

Nicky took his face in both hands to quiet him, to steady him. He had taken for granted that Joe was so together, like he didn’t have his own fears. “I would never leave you,” Nicky said clearly and in Arabic, staring back at him so that he saw the words land. “Never.” He thumbed away a tear when it escaped Joe’s eye. “And you say can anything you want to me. You are honest and you see me like no one ever has.” He took a deep breath and sighed, letting go of that need to flee, not from Joe but from himself. “But you are right. I would let you do anything you wanted. I want you, and I don’t know what that means.”

Joe’s arms curled slowly around him, as though to give him time to reject that embrace. He didn’t, surprising even himself with the relief that came from being held tightly when only seconds ago he had felt like he was about to jump out of his own skin.

Nicky buried his face against Joe’s neck. There was something endlessly comforting about the smell of his own soap on Joe’s skin. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he admitted, quietly, like confession.

Joe held him tighter, head shaking. “You’re used to sacrificing for things. But this isn’t one of those things. You don’t have to give me anything or let me have my way.”

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” Nicky said against his skin.

“Would you hurt me?” Joe asked.

Nicky jerked his head back to stare at him. “No. I—”

“Hurting you, or taking things from you, or making you do something you didn’t want, would hurt me,” Joe explained.

Nicky stared. He understood, of course, because that was how he felt, but he hadn’t seen it clearly from Joe’s side. He nodded slowly. “What do we do then?”

Joe smiled, relief clear on his expression. How could anyone not love him? How could his brother not have cherished him? The world was peopled in fools. “We’ll be honest and we’ll try a bunch of stuff and figure out what you like. If you want.”

Nicky had been watching his mouth when he was talking and jarred himself when he realized Joe was grinning because he’d noticed. “I want,” he admitted. He had never lied to Joe. He couldn’t imagine why he would start now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo this whole chapter was a conversation...I'm not sorry! They NEEDED to talk!
> 
> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/search/domini%20boombeam)


	9. Done Waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You remember back in that shower chapter when I was like, "I have to bump the rating up to explicit because I don't know if this is or isn't!" Well, we are now definitely explicit. O_O

Nicky thought he knew what sex was. He was almost a thousand years old, after all. He had seen and heard about everything and no, he wasn’t himself an expert, but he’d done things. He thought he had the gist of it.

He had no damn idea.

Everything was different with Joe, probably because for the first time in his life he wanted things, he was excited, nervous, completely on edge.

They had started making out in the living room, on the couch. Nicky had never liked this couch more, and he was plenty fond of it before. He had always been fond of his little house. Everything in it had been his. A part of him marveled at the idea that everything in it still was. When Nicky started fingering the hem of Joe’s shirt, to brush fingertips against his skin, Joe had broken the kiss with a smile and asked if he wanted to go to bed. It sent what felt like electricity through his spine and he nodded.

He had been wrong about bodies and the value of touching another person. He had thought he didn’t need that—didn’t want it. He just hadn’t found the person he wanted it with. This time, when Joe took his clothes off, Nicky watched. He didn’t look away or fight the impulse to peek. He mirrored his actions and when they were both naked, they took a second to just look at each other—like it was the first time, or maybe just because it would always be breathtaking to be bared to a person and have them bare themselves to you, to be seen and wanted and allow yourself to be vulnerable.

Just when Nicky worried he was thinking too much, Joe closed the distance between them and kissed the sense out of him. It was like a sensory explosion, his skin against his and his arms around him, pressing them together. Nicky hesitated for all of a split second before letting himself touch this man, letting his hands wander, mapping him from waist to shoulders, one hand sliding up the back of his neck as he moaned into his kiss, losing fingers in his curls.

“What do you want to try first?” Joe asked with a grin edging on devious.

Again, Nicky was sure he’d do anything Joe wanted but it wasn’t because he was willing to sacrifice to please him, it was because he was overwhelmed by the certainty that he wanted whatever Joe offered. He wanted _something_. Nicky groaned in frustration. He didn’t have the words for this. He didn’t know where to start. But he trusted Joe to know.

Joe laughed like he understood, nodding and shoving Nicky back onto the bed. He crawled over him and Nicky moaned at that, something about being under him, contained somehow. Joe’s smile changed, grew, and he stole another kiss, hovering above him. “Try to use your words, Nicolo. Whatever language you want, but I need to know what you like and what you don’t, okay?”

Nicky nodded. Joe raised an eyebrow, looking down at him with an infuriating level of patience. “Yes,” Nicky said, surprised by the needy wobble in his voice. That had never been there before.

He forgot to care about his own wobbly voice when Joe start moving down his body, planting kisses and small bites down his chest and his side, toward his hip. Nicky’s eyes widened, breath caught in his throat. He hadn’t really known what to expect but this wasn’t it. The handful of experiences Nicky had had either been on his knees, or pushed face down on a bed or over a table. He swore in Italian when Joe ghosted his lips along the length of his cock. He wanted to drop his head back, wanted to curl his arms over his face, but he couldn’t stop watching, propped up on his elbows. Joe looked back at him, licking his way back up to the tip of his sex and then pausing there.

Nicky shuddered out a breath. “Yes.”

He watched Joe take him into his mouth and held his breath, trying to smother the rise of indignant sounds in his chest. _Fuck_. No one had ever done this. People had offered, but he had known it wouldn’t work. He’d had so little interest in sex that it would have been impossible. But right now, he couldn’t remember why.

Joe hummed around him, head moving slowly up and down, and Nicky groaned, finally having to drop his head back. He let out strings of stupid, senseless words, and hoped they were in languages Joe didn’t understand. One of Joe’s hand slid up his chest and then down, over his hip. He lifted Nicky’s thigh, urging his leg to bend. He bent it, curling one arm over his face and moaning into it.

Joe’s hand found one of Nicky’s and tugged it to his shoulder, silently reassuring him he could touch too. Nicky clung to his shoulder for a moment, the feel and sound of Joe’s mouth sucking him already having him on edge. He slid his hand to the back of Joe’s neck and then tentatively to the back of his head. He didn’t push, but felt the rise and fall of his head over his cock. “Fuck, yes,” he groaned into his arm, turning his head to the side, into his own elbow—like some distant part of his brain still had the sense to be ashamed and try to smother his sounds.

* * *

Joe lifted his head, releasing Nicky from his mouth and using a hand to stroke him. He looked up his body at him. Nicky was dragging breaths and smothering a string of Italian into his arm. “Nicolo,” he called gently and then bit softly at the man’s inner thigh, reveling in how his whole body arched at the surprise sensation.

He lifted his arm and his head, looking down his body to meet Joe’s gaze. His eyes were watery and dazed and his cheeks flushed. Joe decided he didn’t need to ask if Nicky liked this. He brushed the backs of his fingers against Nicky’s ass, holding his gaze. “Do you want more or do you want to finish like this?”

Nicky swallowed hard, like he was trying to keep his brain functioning. It was one of the greatest compliments Joe had ever received, somewhere under having Nicky’s trust and being brought to this home. “More,” Nicky managed, swallowed again and then added in Arabic. “Can you…I want you inside me.”

Joe groaned low in his chest, his own cock throbbing between his body and the mattress. He was endlessly grateful that Nicky was being vocal, and that his reactions to everything were so raw and easy to read. “Do you have lube?”

Nicky looked momentarily confused and then annoyed. “No. We were tortured a couple days ago, I think I’ll be fine. Just do it,” he practically whined, squirming a little.

Joe wasn’t sure if he wanted to swear or laugh. “This isn’t supposed to be torture,” he reminded.

“I’ll heal fast—” Nicky started to argue.

Joe sat up on his knees, caught Nicky’s hips and pulled him down the bed, making his gasp and stare. His ass was lifted onto Joe’s thighs, his legs bent on either side. He seemed momentarily silenced and stunned by the position, those hazy eyes taking everything in and lingering on Joe’s erection. That gaze made his skin tingle, like a physical touch all its own. Joe reached down and forward, three fingertips brushing Nicky’s lips. He shivered when Nicky opened his mouth automatically, tongue sliding against his fingers when he pushed them into his mouth. “Suck,” Joe said softly, chest swelling when Nicky did, moaning at the feel of that tongue and imagining it elsewhere. Nicky reached out, fingertips touching Joe’s chest and sliding slowly downward. “Open,” Joe whispered and Nicky opened his mouth, releasing those saliva slick fingers.

Joe grabbed Nicky’s thigh with his other hand, sitting back and spreading him, one wet finger drawing a circle around his asshole and eliciting a moan from them both when he slid it into him. He watched Nicky carefully, drinking in every gasp and arch when he moved that finger inside him, adding a second. Nicky’s hand twitched against his stomach, those half-lidded eyes watching him. “Can…Can I…” Nicky swallowed hard, trying to compose himself, body twitching a little.

Joe smiled, raising an eyebrow and watching him, still moving two fingers slowly in and out. “Whatever you want, Nicolo. You can have or do whatever you want,” he said rather than making the man ask, whatever he was trying to ask. But he didn’t miss the way Nicky’s breath hitched for a second there while he was talking, for a split-second worried he’d hurt him somehow. But Nicky was still moaning, still hard, still taking deep swallows of air.

His hand slid down the last length of Joe’s abdomen, fingers touching his sex. Joe hummed a moan, biting back a smile. To think that was what he was asking? Joe had two fingers in him and Nicky was still asking if he could touch his cock?

He started to add a third and stopped when Nicky held his breath, body tensing. He felt him tensing around his fingers. “Nicky,” he said softly.

Nicky nodded tightly but still wasn’t breathing.

He went back to just the two fingers, moving slowly, and Nicky let out a shudder and a breath. His eyes were glassy when he opened them, flustered and distressed and full of need. He was completely exposed and it had very little to do with his nudity and everything to do with his lack of even an attempt at control over himself. Joe realized no one had ever seen Nicky like this. He watched the man drag in a breath to speak but leaned over him and kissed him before he could—afraid that Nicky was about to apologize. Joe did not want an apology.

He left his forehead to Nicky’s when the kiss ended, when they breathed, still pressed together, Joe still fingering him gently, driving little gasps from his chest. “We could wait until we get—”

“I have waited nine hundred years for you,” Nicky said in Arabic.

Joe stared at him, surprised. Nicky stared back, not seeming to realize the depth of what he’d said. And then he did and some of that haze dissolved, eyes widening a little. Joe slid his fingers out of him, sitting back for a second. He had managed to get Nicky so riled up he was letting slip poetry, wanting nothing but to have him inside him and his only two options seemed to be to leave Nicky disappointed or to risk tearing him and making this something painful. Well, that just wasn’t going to work. Joe was a fucking immortal. He could solve this problem. The idea hit him so hard he almost swore, jumping up from bed. “Don’t move!” he called before rushing out of the room and through the dark house.

He fumbled around the kitchen, spent all of five seconds deciding between oils before settling on the jar of coconut oil. He hurried back, though it was nice to be freely naked in a whole house. When he swung back into the room, Nicky had sat up and scooted back to the headboard. His knees were up and his elbows to them, one hand pushing hair out of his face. He looked surprised to see him. Joe kicked the door shut and climbed back onto the bed. “You moved,” he said with a soft smile, sitting on his knees right in front of Nicky and touching his arms, stealing a kiss.

Nicky came back to life with that kiss, arms wrapping around his shoulders. “I didn’t mean to mess it up. We can do it however you want. It was all amazing. I can wait—” he rushed out the words, breathy, still so raw and exposed.

Joe kissed him again, touching his thighs and pulling him a little to his lap, to have his legs wrapping around him, their semi-hard cocks rubbing together until they grew fully erect and he was drinking Nicky’s moans. When the kiss ended enough to lean back and look at Nicky, he had that nice haze to his eyes again. “You waited long enough, Nicolo,” he said and this time when Nicky’s breath caught, Joe realized it was on his own name. That old name.

He let Nicky lean back against the headboard and made quick work of opening the coconut oil. Nicky had a small, skeptical frown until Joe had slick fingers in him, and then he was moaning and arching up the headboard, swearing in too many languages and grabbing at Joe’s shoulders. It didn’t take long to get three fingers into him now. He stroked himself with that slick hand and then lifted Nicky’s hips.

Nicky clung to his shoulders, sinking slowly, taking shallow gasps. Joe kept one arm around his back and the other hand on Nicky’s thigh, ready to stop that descent at the first sign of pain or panic. When he was fully seated in Joe’s lap they both just clung to each other for a moment, breathing and feeling. Joe kissed Nicky’s shoulder, his collar, his neck, up to his jaw. He waited until Nicky started to move, rolling his hips before lifting them and lowering, testing them both. Joe moaned against his skin, breaths deeper when Nicky started moving more and more. He reached up Nicky’s back, framing his spine with one arm and gripping the back of his neck. Before Joe could even figure out what he wanted to ask or how, Nicky was saying, “Yes.”

Joe almost lost himself then. He groaned and thrust his hips forward, pushing Nicky up against the headboard. He bit softly at Nicky’s jaw and used his hold on the back of his neck to start pulling him down into his thrusts. The first two were experimental, testing his own restraint and studying Nicky’s reactions. Nicky’s eyes were barely open, lips parted to gasp and let out groans of pleasure. He nodded when Joe looked at him, still holding on to his shoulders. Joe kept his grip on the back of Nicky’s neck to keep him from ducking his head or hiding. He wanted to see his expressions when he fucked him, to record them to memory.

When he was close and Nicky’s fingers were twitching in their grip on his shoulders, Joe moved his right hand from Nicky’s thigh, sliding it between them to wrap oil slick fingers around his sex. Nicky’s mouth opened wider, hips jerking between Joe’s hand and his hips. “Nicolo,” Joe moaned, barely hanging on himself but hellbent on not finishing first.

Nicky’s eyes closed and his body arched into Joe’s when he came, spilling on their chests and Joe’s hand. A few thrusts later Joe followed.

For long, perfect, minutes they stayed like that, catching their breath and shivering. When Nicky emerged from his haze and looked at Joe, Joe leaned in and kissed him. He lifted him off of him and caught his wrist, tugging him from bed to the shower to clean up.

“Is it…” Nicky began, voice low when they stepped into the shower. Joe looked at him, studying him. For a second he thought it had been a mistake, Nicky looked like he’d been caught under his stare. But then he went on, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Is it always like that?”

“Like that?” Joe asked, heart beating a little faster, unable to resist the worry that Nicky had not liked it, despite the results.

“Intense,” Nicky said, rinsing off. “Good. Really good,” he added.

Joe smiled and hugged him from behind. “That means you want to try more stuff?”

Nicky hummed.

Joe turned the water off and grabbed them a towel. “Do you want to try it the other way sometime?”

Nicky started, staring at him. “Really? You mean…Me inside you?”

Joe nodded. “If you want.”

Nicky dried off, shrugging, but Joe caught him trying to hide a smile. He followed him back to the bedroom. Nicky grabbed a pair of sweatpants, pulling them on. Joe pulled on a pair of boxer briefs and climbed into bed with him. When they turned out the lights and settled in, Joe remembered how Nicky had looked when he came back to the room after running to the kitchen for the coconut oil. There had been despair in his eyes and an apology for anything on his lips. Joe rolled onto his side, chest to Nicky’s back, and hooked an arm around him. He kissed his spine. “Did you really think I ran out on you in the middle of sex?”

Nicky huffed a sleepy laugh. “To be fair, all of the blood had left my brain at that point.”

Joe nodded, accepting that for now. Someday, Nicky would trust he wasn’t leaving him. Someday he wouldn’t just think it or believe it, he would _know_ it in his bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think in the next update we'll start mingling with the rest of the family again!
> 
> A huge thank you to everyone reading this and taking the time to leave comments. It means so much to me to hear what you're thinking and how the story is coming across. <3


	10. Sicily

“Do we really have to leave?” Joe asked the next day.

Nicky hesitated, looking at the house and then at Joe. “No. We could invite the others over. I mean. We have a guest room.”

Joe did not miss how many times Nicky just said “we”. He also was not an idiot and was not going to point it out. Instead he shook his head. “Nope. Just promise we’ll come back?” He missed the others. He liked them. But he did not think he wanted them in that little house that was just Nicky, and now Nicky and Joe.

Nicky flashed him a smile at the door, holding it for him. “Of course. This is always where I end up.”

Joe grabbed his bag and headed out to the car while Nicky locked up. It was early morning, the sky clear and the sound of waves never far away. They caught the ferry to Syracuse. Joe took a window seat to watch the horizon and Nicky settled in at his side, leaning into him and reading a book.

“How long will we be in Sicily?” Joe asked conversationally.

Nicky shrugged. “No idea. Andy usually has a plan.”

Joe glanced at him, finding he liked watching Nicky read more than the sights of the ocean and cities along the coast. “Is this a secret?” Joe surprised even himself when the question came out. His pulse jumped a little even though he tried to stay casual—impartial to something he was very very partial to. Nicky was so private and quiet-natured, and there were so many things about him it seemed not even the family knew. Even if he wanted to keep their relationship a secret, it didn’t necessarily mean it was something he was ashamed of, or something dirty. Still, Joe’s heart ached and it was hard not to cringe when Nicky sat upright, no longer leaning against him.

Nicky glanced around at the other passengers on the quiet ferry, like he was looking for some source of the question before turning a little sideways to look at Joe. “Do you want it to be a secret?”

Joe felt like the inches between them were miles. “No.”

Nicky softened. He smiled, leaned in, and kissed him. It wasn’t exactly chaste, but it wasn’t wildly inappropriate for public transport either. When the kiss broke, Nicky settled back in at his side, leaned into him, and Joe rested a hand on Nicky’s thigh. “Have you ever had a relationship that wasn’t a secret?” Nicky asked.

Joe only had to think of it briefly to realize he hadn’t. He was never the one that cared to hide things but most of his relationships had been loosely called that anyway. They were more trysts or friends with benefits. “No.”

Nicky nodded, reading his book and keeping the conversation casual. “You’ll tell me if you’re uncomfortable with something? You can just push me away if—”

Joe laughed, giving Nicky’s thigh a squeeze and shaking his head. “I can’t imagine ever pushing you away.”

Nicky shrugged. “It’s an open invitation. It’s going to be a long life.” He flipped a page.

Joe smiled. He loved when Nicky accidentally said things like that—like they were going to spend lifetimes together. Like his house was their house. Like he had been waiting just for Joe all his nine hundred plus years. His smile faded a little. Soon they’d be back with the family for who knows how long, on missions and crammed into safehouses together. As much as he looked forward to that, he also worried about it. “Can I ask you one of those questions you’re going to hate?” he said softly. It might be one of his last chances before someone else was around to overhear.

Nicky laughed, still reading. “If you must.”

“You said Booker propositioned you,” Joe led.

The muscles in Nicky’s thigh jumped under his hand.

“Tell me how it happened?”

Nicky smirked, flipping another page. “Do you want me to tell you about every person that ever hit on me? That could take some time. I have been around for a while, you know.”

“Yes. I would definitely listen to all of those stories. But right now, I want to know what happened with Booker.”

Nicky’s smile faded, he was only pretending to read now. “He was drunk and in that mood.”

“You mean he was beating you up when he asked you?”

Nicky frowned, looking up at him. “I don’t like how that sounds when you say it.”

“Which part?”

“The part about him beating me up. It makes it sound like he is a bully and I am a child. I am older than him. I could have stopped him.”

“Does being older make you a better fighter?”

Nicky smirked. “No. But I am.”

Joe stared at him, surprised. “Are you trying to distract me?” It had almost worked. Annoyed Nicky was cute and then cocky Nicky made his skin warm.

Nicky went back to his book.

Joe waited.

After at least three minutes of waiting and Nicky pretending to read, the Italian finally sighed. He didn’t look up from the book. “It will make it harder for you to work with him if you know. And I do not want to dig up the past. It was more than a hundred years ago.” His gaze skipped from the page to Joe and then back. “I want my future,” he muttered.

Joe softened a little, because without meaning to, Nicky had called him his future. “If our roles were reversed, would you need to know?” That seemed to be the best way of putting things into context for Nicky. It turned out there were a lot of things he had been okay with bearing himself that he would never be okay with anyone he cared for enduring.

Nicky was quiet for a while and then he closed the book but continued to stare down at it. “It was almost a hundred and fifty years ago. We were arguing. It came to blows.”

Joe clenched his jaw because he knew that didn’t mean they got into a fight—it meant Booker had taken it out on Nicky and Nicky had let him. But that wasn’t the point and arguing word choice wouldn’t help.

“We were in some alley in France in the middle of the night. Suddenly he stopped hitting. He dragged me to my feet and pushed me up against a wall. He grabbed my hair to make me look up at him. I hated how the moon haloed him because I couldn’t decide if it was a divine sign or not and either way it seemed cruel. He kissed me. I pushed him off. He said we were the same. _Alone_. And he tried again. I stopped him and told him no.”

Joe waited still, because he felt the pause, knew that a part of Nicky was just hoping to be interrupted. It was hard not to answer that silent call.

He opened his book and went back to pretending to read, expression grim and robbed of joy. “He stabbed me to death. Fourteen stabs before I died. I woke up alone.”

Joe almost admitted that Nicky had been right, knowing this would not help him live and work with Booker. “Did it usually end like that? When he beats you, does he usually kill you?”

Nicky shrugged. “No. But sometimes I goad him on. I argue with him and make it worse. I know his actions are still his own responsibility, but that is the truth and when I do, I know it’ll get worse.” He sighed. “It really isn’t as bad as you think, Joe. It’s been a long life. I have died many ways that are far worse.”

Joe watched him carefully and wondered if he really believed that. It seemed like there was something particularly bad about it being Booker because he was family. It wasn’t how he died—it was that it happened at all and who did it. “Does Andy know?” As soon as he asked he felt Nicky tense again.

“No.”

Joe nodded. He had suspected she didn’t know—had hoped it. He wasn’t sure how he would have dealt with it if Andy and Nile knew and thought it had been okay. A hundred and fifty years of Booker treating Nicky like a fucking punching bag? He tried not to think about Booker stabbing him to death that time he turned him down. He had wanted to know—had needed to know. But it wasn’t going to be helpful to him if he dwelled on it. “Are you going to tell me not to tell her?” Joe asked when Nicky didn’t say anything.

Nicky shook his head. “No. It’s not really a secret, Joe. It’s just something I never said. I won’t make you keep it.”

Joe studied him, not sure what to make of that. “Do you have secrets, Nicolo?”

Nicky softened at the sound of his own name. “Not exactly.”

“Things no one ever asked so no one ever knew?”

Nicky smiled. It was small, a little pleased with himself and a little fragile too, like there were things he had happily kept for only himself and things he wished someone—anyone—had noticed. Joe put his arm around his shoulders. “I’m going to find all of them,” he whispered and smiled when Nicky did—a real smile this time.

“You know, I think you might,” Nicky conceded, opening his book again.

* * *

Andy waited for them at a café along the seaside roads crowded with shoppers and tourists. She wore sunglasses and stood when she saw them coming, smiling. Nicky picked up his step, arms opening to her. She hugged him, the way she had thousands of times before. He always held a few seconds longer than most, a reminder that this person cared for her—loved her—she kissed his cheek when he let her go, so fast that almost no one would have noticed.

“Where’s Nile?” Nicky asked, stepping past her to take a seat.

“With Booker. They’ll be here tomorrow,” Andy said, hugging Joe too when he opened his arms to her. She liked Joe. He was solid and he hadn’t had a meltdown on her yet. He seemed like a person she could stand for a thousand years. And then she inhaled. She hadn’t even noticed Nicky had that scent on him—the one he always had after he’d been home—until she smelled it on Joe.

When he let her go she took a step back and forced a tight smile, taking her seat across from Nicky. “Get me another coffee?” she asked Joe. He nodded, taking the queue smoothly and heading into the café to order, leaving them alone.

Nicky looked around at the crowd and the ocean view. Innocent as ever. She had seen him look like that with someone else’s brains on his shirt before. It was not a measure of anything. She had never known anyone that could keep their shit together as well as Nicky. He didn’t flinch. He had been a perfect soldier for almost a thousand years and an even better brother.

“What’s going on Nicky?” Andy asked tightly, trying to keep it even but for one of the few times in her long life, she was unsure of him. She had known Nicky for so long, she thought she could predict his moves but here he was, throwing her for a loop.

Nicky raised one eyebrow, waiting for more.

“Nile thinks there’s something going on between you and Joe. Then he runs off to check on you and now…” She glanced toward the café, and Joe inside ordering. “He smells like you. You took him to your place?” Nicky only smelled like that particular soap when he went home, to that little house over on Malta. It was usually where he went between jobs, when he needed to crash someplace before meeting up with them again or when she demanded they all take a year off.

Nicky didn’t tense, still slouching back in his seat and watching her. “We needed someplace to stay.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Nicholas. You don’t take anyone to that place.” She sighed, still not looking right at him. They had talked about a lot of things in his thousand years, but she was still struggling with this. Nicky had always been the responsible one. She had had to keep an eye on Nile plenty, afraid she’d get herself into real trouble or heartbreak some centuries. But she had never pried into Nicky’s life—never thought she needed to. If she loved him less, she wouldn’t do it now. “Are you two sleeping together?”

Nicky’s soft expression hardened in a flash. “Is there a rule against it?” he asked lowly. They both knew there wasn’t. Sex had been something casual between many of them—but never Nicky.

She looked at him then, surprised. He was being defensive. Andy exhaled slowly but nodded, like he had issued a challenge and she would meet it. _For him_ , she would meet it. She leaned forward and caught his hand on the table, closing some of the distance between them. This wasn’t about some mission. She wasn’t questioning him. He wasn’t her soldier now. “I have known you a very long time,” she said quietly, as soft as she could, which she knew was still far from soft. “You have never been interested in anyone, Nicky. I realize he likes you and he’s one of us, but that doesn’t mean you have to—”

Nicky jolted. “Stop.”

She did, but she kept hold of his hand and her eyes on his expression. If he didn’t say something more, she would continue. She would not drop this. Andy was happy to avoid most conversations, but if Nicky was letting Joe into his bed out of obligation, she would fight with him right here in the middle of this beautiful café about it. Nicky would do anything for the family and he had gone through some questionable penance periods in his early immortality for having been a Crusader, invading other people’s lands. He had never really recovered from that guilt. They had argued about it many times and he said she could not understand because he owed a debt that could not be paid. Lives can not be returned, no matter how many others he saved in the centuries since.

“I can have him shadow me,” Andy said when he still hadn’t figured out his words. She was trying to be quick about this but if Nicky dragged it out until Joe came back to the table because he thought that would end it—he would be surprised. “It’ll be my decision and you can argue it if you don’t want him to feel rejected. I’ll send you on some recon shit. I won’t even tell Nile where you are so she can’t blab it to the newbie.”

“Stop,” Nicky said again, and this time there was a laugh on his breath. He shook his head, expression softening. He lifted her hand in both of his and kissed her knuckles, looking at her over them. Andy stared, not surprised by the affection, Nicky had bouts of affection with her and Nile when no one was looking, but surprised by the happiness in his eyes. It hurt her chest to realize she had never seen that before, not like that, without restraint or a shadow.

“You like him?”

Nicky nodded.

Andy sighed, relieved beyond belief. She practically sagged in her chair, letting out a string of curses in dead languages.

“You were really that worried?”

She hated that he sounded honestly surprised. “I was about to have Nile become your bunkmate for a century to keep him from taking advantage of you.”

Nicky laughed, giving her hand back to her. The sound of his laughter was rich and beautiful, a sound that had been rare over the centuries. Nicky could tolerate a lot, but he couldn’t fake anything. If he laughed, he meant it.

Joe returned then, smiling himself as though Nicky’s happiness was infectious. He had a tray and put down a fresh cup of coffee in front of Andy, a latte in front of Nicky, and his own espresso in front of the empty chair beside Nicky. He also had a plate of pastries and three forks, setting it down in the middle.

Andy pushed her hair back from her face, looking at the two of them with new eyes. She had seen how well they worked together in a fight, practically synchronized. She had chalked it up to Joe being well trained and already attached to Nicky for finding him, and Nicky feeling responsible for the newbie. She realized now she had underestimated them. Nicky had taken him home. She had been to Nicky’s little house a handful of times but never gone inside, only there to find him. He was so surprised the first time that she realized he didn’t think anyone knew about the place. He had invited her in but she had declined, because there were so few things they got to keep private or to themselves and that place had obviously meant something to him.

“Has anyone told you the story of how Nicky became obsessed with food?” Andy asked when Nicky picked up a fork and took a chunk out of the carrot cake.

Nicky frowned at her. “It is not an obsession, it is survival.”

Joe laughed a little, sitting back. “No. I don’t think so.”

“It is not a good story,” Nicky said, taking his bite of cake.

Andy shrugged.

“I want to hear it,” Joe said

Andy smiled and told a story of a time when Nicky and Nile got caught in a blizzard and took refuge in a tiny cabin that they were soon trapped in.

“If you tell me they ate each other,” Joe started, a little bit horrified and a little bit ecstatic—the way he always got when one of their stories was bordering on too much.

“No. But they had limited food.”

“I killed a buck. That was food,” Nicky interjected in a bitter mumble.

Andy flashed him a smile and went on, telling the very exciting story of their long winter struggling to survive and how Nicky tricked Nile into thinking there was more food than there was so that she would eat most of his rations as well.

“You always make a big deal out of that story. We were both wasting away. Giving her more of the food didn’t change much,” Nicky argued.

Andy sipped her coffee. “How many times did you die that winter and how many times did Nile die?” she bated him. He set his jaw, refusing to answer. She was pretty sure he didn’t know. Starving to death was weird. The immortality kicked them back to life but with barely more weight on them than when they first died—still knocking at death’s door.

“Oh shit, that’s why he’s always trying to feed Nile!”

Andy nodded.

Nicky frowned. “I feed everyone.”

Joe waggled a hand. “You do but you push _a lot_ of food at Nile. And you feed her first.”

“I do not.”

“You do,” Andy muttered. “But to be fair, she loves it.”

“She was starving!” Nicky burst, groaning and throwing up both arms at the two of them. “You watch that happen, unable to feed her more than scraps, and see if you can resist the urge to give her food now.”

Andy smirked against the lip of her coffee. She didn’t grab one of the forks to start in on the cakes the other two were sharing because she knew if she waited long enough…

Nicky shot her a glare and pushed a fork at her, knowing exactly what she was doing.

It was true. He had made a habit of feeding all of them after that particular winter. And Andy might give him a hard time sometimes for it, but she understood. She had felt the same when she found them at the end of winter, barely more than skeletons. He had driven her mad those first days because every time she pushed food at him, he handed it to Nile. Even when they were fine, for years after that, Andy would catch herself handing Nicky food only for Nicky to hand it off to Nile. It was laughable, because if he hadn’t pissed her off by never eating anything she gave him, she might have ended up being the one obsessed with feeding them. Of course, if Nicky had even noticed it, he had never turned it back on her when she told the story of his food focus.

She tried the carrot cake and that led them into a heated debate on which carrot cake had been the best in their very long lives and extensive experience with cakes.

They sat in the café for another hour talking about plans and getting sidetracked with other stories. Joe made conversations smooth, more than willing to carry them himself if Andy and Nicky fell into quiet, as they were both prone to do. He touched Nicky’s arm when he was telling her about how they got grabbed in Thailand and waterboarded. It was all so natural and she wasn’t sure she could remember ever seeing Nicky this, present. He wasn’t in his own thoughts or watching the crowds or reading his book.

They eventually headed back to the safehouse to crash. Nile and Booker would meet up with them early tomorrow. Andy was not looking forward to Nile’s level of emotional reaction to this new development—or her smugness about being right. Nile had been bent on the idea that Joe and Nicky were an item, meant to be and all that, and that Joe had run off to woe Nicky like in some damned movie. Andy had told her she was letting her imagination get the better of her. Now she was going to have to try to take the “I told you so” with some dignity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the amazing feedback and enthusiasm on this story so far! <3


	11. Clearing the Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh. So I wrote most of this chapter and then didn't like it and then REWROTE it! I think it turned out much better, plus sexy stuff!

Nicky woke first when Andy rolled out of her bed beside theirs. She said something about going for supplies. Nicky didn’t question her—had stopped doing that hundreds of years ago. Joe’s arm tightened around him briefly, as though reminding himself through sleep where he was, and then relaxing again.

The second time Nicky woke was only maybe a half hour later, the first rays of sunlight filtering through the windows of the safe house and Joe still curled around him. He held tighter when Nicky woke, pressed closer when he began to wake as well. Nicky’s eyes opened at the feel of him, hard and pressing against his ass through sweatpants. He felt his own pulse jump. Joe nuzzled the back of his neck, waking up. His body froze when he realized he was pressing his erection against Nicky.

“Joe—” Nicky started, his own voice huskier than he expected.

“Forget it,” Joe pleaded in a sleepy murmur. He shifted his hips away but kept his arms around him. “Stay just a little longer?”

Nicky missed the feel of him, turning a little with him, hand sliding back to palm him through his pants. Joe’s breath caught in his throat, arms reflexively squeezing Nicky. “Good dream?” Nicky asked, still feeling the full shape of him through fabric.

Joe turned his face into Nicky’s neck, kissing and rumbling low in his chest. “Very good dream,” he confessed.

Nicky listened to the house for another second, to the stillness of it, even though he knew he would have woken up if Andy had come back yet—he would have heard the car before the door. They were alone. He shivered when Joe bit softly at his neck and let all his attention go to the other man’s sounds, his breathing, his hands now wandering Nicky’s chest and sides. “Tell me about your dream?” Nicky urged, twisting around in Joe’s arms.

Joe cupped his face, kissing him, still humming as Nicky’s hand continued to rub his stiff sex. “The moon wants to hear stories of its reflection?” he whispered against Nicky’s lips.

Nicky smiled at his poet. The things that fell from Joe’s lips were breathtaking and Nicky still wasn’t sure how he had earned Joe’s attention, but he would try not to argue—try not to convince him to look away even if he thought he probably should. Nicky broke the kiss and slid down Joe’s body, catching the flicker of confusion and then lusty surprise across the other man’s beautiful features. Joe’s hand had stayed with the side of his face, turning, fingers pushing into the hair on the side of his head when Nicky settled between his thighs. He tugged Joe’s pants and boxer briefs down his hips, freeing his erection.

Joe inhaled sharply, shoulders lifting and gaze cutting around the little bedroom at the walls. He was reconsidering their surroundings. Nicky stroked him, looking up his body to watch Joe’s jaw flex and head fall back. “No one is home,” he promised before leaning up and wrapping his mouth around him, hoping his word would be enough to ease that last tension.

Joe’s fingers flexed against his head. “Nicolo,” he ground his name into a groan.

Nicky marveled at the sound of his name like that, in that throat, breathy like something incredible. He’d used his mouth a few times in his life, but none of those memories seemed to align with this. It was the same act in technicality alone. Those times, his partner had twisted fingers in his hair and used his face. He hadn’t really had to do much aside from being there and letting it happen. Nicky was fast realizing that was how all of his sexual experiences before Joe had been. But he couldn’t imagine how they could have gone any differently. Before Joe, he had been a bystander to his own life—a ghost, just like Booker had said.

Joe didn’t twist his hand in his hair, he just touched, stayed with him. His hips flexed but they didn’t rise, resisting the impulse to drive up into his throat. Nicky swallowed around him, reveling in the sounds it wrung from the other man. He wrapped a hand around his base, stroking up and pushing his mouth down, trying to take more of him. Joe’s chest arched, head and shoulders pressing back.

It was a rush, to cause so much pleasure that not even Joe could find words, his free hand had gone from flexing and clawing against his own abdomen to reaching up, clutching at the headboard. His breathing was getting faster and Nicky kept moving his head and hand, watching up his body to take in as much of his reactions as he could. Maybe someday he’d ask Joe to look back at him when he did this, to not look away. He could ask that, he realized.

“N-Nicky…If you don-don’t stop…” Joe tried to string words, tried to warn.

Nicky didn’t stop and when Joe came undone it was beautiful, his body spasmed, arched, tensed. Everything but his hips that he kept so perfectly, painfully still. He turned his face into his own arm, groaning against it. Nicky slowed, sucking him gently until his fingers finally did curl in his hair, not pulling, but gripping with a small plea caught in his throat. He let him go, kissing his hip once before gently tugging his pants back up.

Joe was panting when he sat up, reaching for Nicky’s face. Nicky blushed, opening his mouth to remind him where his mouth had just been and that he’d swallowed—Joe kissed him. Not just kissed him, but devoured his mouth and Nicky realized that where his mouth had been had not magically slipped his mind.

Joe reached out, fingers curling in the front of Nicky’s jeans, looking for the fly. Nicky smiled against his kiss and caught his wrist, stopping him. Joe was about to ask why when he heard the car doors closing outside. His eyes widened. “Nicolo di Genova! Did you know?”

“Know what?” Nicky asked innocently, still on his knees between Joe’s legs on the bed, Joe’s hand still wrapped around the back of his neck, keeping his face close.

“Oh, this is a thing now, Nicky…You have a point on the board, but I will even up that score,” he promised, stealing another kiss.

Nicky laughed. “I’m not sure I understand who’s winning or if that’s supposed to be a threat, but okay.”

The bedroom door swung open. Nicky was smiling when he looked over toward it, expecting Andy.

His smile flatlined when he saw Booker there. For the first time in two hundred years, Booker was unreadable. His eyes took in the whole room like a crime scene before fixing on Nicky’s face like there was some proof of what he’d done. What had he done? Nothing. Except create this incredibly awkward dynamic. He was going to have to figure out how to fix this—how to make this work. They were supposed to be a team after all.

But fixing awkward wasn’t usually his job.

Before he could figure out what to say, Joe chimed in. “Hey Booker,” he said with alarming pleasantness. And then his fingers flexed on the back of Nicky’s neck and he pulled him in to him, kissing him. It wasn’t exactly lewd but it certainly wasn’t chaste. When the kiss ended, Booker had vanished.

Nicky stared at Joe, stunned.

Joe rubbed his thumb under Nicky’s bottom lip, his own expression shifting to something like uncertainty. “Should I not have done that?”

Nicky smiled slowly. “You know, you didn’t stab him, so I think you did great.” He kissed his forehead before getting up. “Thank you, my love,” he mumbled in Italian, standing and stretching. He didn’t think anything of what he’d said until he saw the way Joe was staring at him. His heart jumped up in his chest. “Coffee,” he blurted out, starting for the door.

Joe laughed and followed him. “You know, coffee wasn’t common until the 18th century. How did _you_ survive before that?”

“It was dark times, Yusuf. _Dark. Times_.”

* * *

Joe grinned, hurriedly changing into his jeans before following Nicky out of the room and down the hallway to the open living room and kitchen. Booker was out of sight, which was fine by Joe, and Andy was just sitting down in one of the chairs in the living room. She sat down like an old woman, despite being an ancient woman in a young body. Joe liked her a lot. She was steady and certain and he was pretty sure she’d been ready to throw him off the cliffs when she thought he’d pushed his way into Nicky’s bed.

He was starting to understand why Nicky didn’t want her to find out how things had become between him and Booker. He had assumed they all just sort of took Nicky for granted, but he was realizing how much they loved him, even if they hadn’t always understood him. Andy and Nicky had been curled up on the couch last night while Joe watched the match. He ended up watching them more than the game. Nicky read a book, turning ever so often to make a comment to Andy about an inaccuracy in the historic setting of the book or a joke about a shared memory. Joe had never seen Andy smile that much before.

“Have you eaten?” Nicky asked Andy on his way to the kitchen.

She gave him a look that was answer enough. “Are you making coffee?” she asked, showing her priorities.

Nicky hummed agreement.

Joe leaned against the kitchen island and watched Nicky round it, going straight for the kettle. This house had drip coffee—not the fancy espresso machine as Nicky’s secret home. _Their home._

It had been an impulse to kiss him when Booker walked into the room and smothered their moment. He wanted to believe he’d done it because he hated the way Nicky’s smile vanished, the way all those bright emotions vanished from his expression, dropping him back into that stoic, calm. But by the time the kiss ended he worried he’d done it to show Booker that Nicky was his—and that felt wrong. He didn’t like thinking he could have kissed Nicky for any reason but Nicky.

“We’ll hang out here today and leave at sundown. I have a boat coming,” Andy said, turning on the tv.

“Where’s Nile?” Nicky asked.

“I made her get rid of the car and walk back, thought I’d at least let you wake up before she storms in.”

Nicky shot her a look even though she wasn’t turned his way. “I’ll make pancakes.”

From where Joe was standing he caught the quirk of Andy’s smile.

The front door slapped open with such a sudden bang that Andy had a gun in hand and Nicky had a kitchen knife that he definitely didn’t need for coffee or pancakes. Nicky swore in Italian and put it back when Nile walked in, still catching her breath. She bent over, hands to her knees, breath evening out slowly.

“Did you run back?” Joe asked, though he could guess. He smiled when she stood upright and looked at him. He hadn’t seen her in a while and was surprised how much he’d missed her.

Nile started to smile back and then frowned sharply. She pointed at him. “No. Go take a walk newbie.”

Joe blinked.

Nicky paused in coffee making to look at her. “Why?” he asked before Joe could.

Nile met his gaze but she didn’t smile. She looked…sad. Nicky straightened, turning fully toward her and glancing at Joe, torn.

For some reason the story about the two of them being snowed in for a winter, dying together, came to mind. Nicky had starved for her. He might have done that for anyone, but he loved Nile and had been looking after her for almost his entire life. But there he was, hesitating to tell Joe to do as she said so she could say whatever she needed to say.

“I’ll be right outside,” Joe said before Nicky had to decide, flashing him a reassuring smile before heading for the backdoor.

“Was I right?” he heard Nile demanding and Andy groan a “Yes” before he stepped outside and let the door swing shut. The morning was warm, the backyard a short stone stretch before rocks and cliffs and ocean. It was beautiful. And then his gaze landed on Booker, sitting in a chair facing the view and nursing a beer at seven in the morning.

* * *

Nicky walked around the island, looking Nile over like he could see a wound if it was there. But that wasn’t how things worked for them. Everything healed but the things that mattered. “What happened? Are you okay?” Why did she look that grim? What was the last time Nile had looked that sad? A few times came to mind, usually when they were standing over mass graves or battlefields.

Andy sighed. “She’s fine. She’s just—”

“I didn’t know,” Nile said, closing in on him. She touched his face and his hair and looked like she might cry. “I swear I didn’t know. Nicky, you never said you were interested in anyone, so I just thought you never…” She shook her head, setting those words aside, hands planted on his shoulders now. It would look like she was the one trying to calm him, but she did this when she thought one of them were angry with her and she knew she was in the wrong. She did this when she was afraid she had broken something. “You have to believe me. I would never have made a move on him if I thought you liked him at all. I’m so sorry.”

Nicky exhaled and pinched the bridge of his nose. She was fine. Nothing horrible had happened. This was just…worry? No. This was more. She had been afraid she’d messed up something, damaged something. He hadn’t really anticipated that and felt bad for it now. Why wouldn’t he expect her to care about his feelings? “It’s fine.”

Nile frowned tightly, like she’d eaten something bad. “Are you saying that but then inside you hate me?”

He laughed and touched her cheek. “No. Stop. I know you didn’t know. I was never mad at you.”

Nile stared at him for another second before exhaling all her fears and throwing her arms around him. He hugged her gladly and when she unwrapped from him, went back to making coffee, the kettle screaming.

“So, everything went…well?” Nile asked, sitting at the kitchen island.

“The mission went fine,” Nicky replied, even though he knew that wasn’t what she was asking.

Andy snorted. “He took Joe to Malta.”

Nile twisted to look back at the boss and then at Nicky. “No!”

“He smelled like him…”

“Nicholas!” Nile shrieked, pretending to be scandalized. And then she let her gaze wander over Nicky, her felt it even before he turned to catch her, raising his eyebrow. “I just haven’t thought about you like that in a while…”

“In a while?”

Nile hummed. “Remember when I kissed you?”

Andy turned to look at them then. “You kissed Nicky?”

“She attacked me…” Nicky said, biting back a laugh and pour the water over the coffee grounds, letting it filter through and drip into the pot.

“I might have thrown myself at him, yeah. Nicky, I can’t believe you never told Andy!” Nile laughed.

“I can’t believe you never told me!” Andy redirected the guilt.

“You were embarrassed,” Nicky reminded, pulling mugs from the cupboard. “Remember, back when you used to feel embarrassed?”

Nile waved him off and turned toward Andy. “It was in the 1400s. I got into Nicky’s bath.”

Andy hummed. “You always did come on strong…I think you tried that move on me too.”

Nile grinned. “It worked on you.”

Andy shrugged.

“You can’t tell me you never tried to get into Nicky’s pants!” Nile deflected.

“She didn’t,” Nicky confirmed.

“He wasn’t interested,” Andy said almost at the same time.

Nicky smirked and poured her coffee first. Andy had never had to say much to understand enough.

Nile swivelled back toward him. “Did Joe climb into your bath?” she tried to redirect the conversation.

Nicky paused, mid-pour. “…technically, I guess so.”

Nile almost screamed.

“Nile, please, not before the coffee.”

Nile swiveled back toward her, pointing. “Admit that I was right! I was SO right!”

Andy groaned and dropped her head back against the chair, eyes closing. “Fuck.”

* * *

Joe did not love being left alone with Booker, mostly because he was still trying to figure out how to not murder the man. It was hard to look directly at him and not remember that morning he’d walked in on him spitting mean remarks at Nicky, wrapping his hands around his neck, lifting him up the wall…

“Do we need to talk about this?” Booker asked, voice rough, like he hadn’t used it in a while.

Joe took a few steps closer, pretending to look at the view too. “I don’t know,” he answered, because it was as close to honest as he could get. He couldn’t completely write this guy off because they seemed to be locked into immortality together and that meant something. He was _family_.

Booker groaned a little, like this was a nuisance. “I get it. You’re soft on Nicky and you saw us fighting.”

“ _Fighting_ ,” he tasted the word. It was bitter. It wasn’t accurate. When he turned a little toward him, Booker was already watching him, a little uneasy and a little angry.

“I don’t know what he told you—”

“Everything.”

Booker huffed an almost laugh, shaking his head a little and dragging his hand through his hair like he meant to argue that—like he had secrets with Nicky. “Okay,” he conceded, obviously not believing him. “Well, life is a long thing for us, Joe. It’s complicated.”

“It doesn’t seem that complicated,” Joe countered, even-toned.

“Because you are new. You do not know what it is like.”

“I know better than to take my own shit out on other people.”

Booker’s teeth clicked. He rolled his shoulders and looked away. “Nick and I have known each other for a very long time. I have lost more than you can imagine. I get it, you popped his cherry and think he’s your damsel now, but Nicky isn’t a damsel, Joe. He’s a fucking monster just like the rest of us.”

Joe slid his hands into his pockets to keep from curling them into fists. Nicky wasn’t a damsel, but he wasn’t a monster either.

Booker laughed like he could read his thoughts, rolling out of his chair and turning to face him. “Do you know what Nicky was doing when he died?”

“Yes.”

“He was a crusader for fucks sake.”

Joe refused to cringe. They had talked about it. He had brushed against that endless well of guilt in Nicky’s heart. The idea of someone like Booker wielding that guilt was horrifying. Nicky had believed wrongly, he had followed and found himself so wrong that for the first few decades of his immortality, he thought he’d been punished to wander the earth dying again and again until he’d paid for his sins, for the lives stolen by himself and his people. Eventually Andy had convinced him he wasn’t being punished, that he was meant to use that endless life to help her change the world. But Nicky confessed to Joe that he didn’t necessarily think the one truth cancelled the other. He could have a purpose and still be damned. Joe had asked if they were all damned then and Nicky had smiled so beautiful when he looked at him—had told him that was impossible, that Joe was too good.

Booker swore in French and turned his back on him, looking at the view again and bending to grab up his beer bottle from the stone ground. “You’re new, so you don’t get it yet. But dying isn’t a big deal. It happens a lot.”

“Not a big deal?” Joe asked, thinking about how Nicky thought every death was his penance, horrified that one of these times he wouldn’t wake up here but in hell.

Booker opened his mouth to answer but Joe closed the space between them. Booker’s eyes widened, bloodshot, he caught Joe’s shoulder but didn’t see the knife in his hand. He dropped the beer bottle and it smashed on the ground.

He grunted and gnashed his teeth, fingers twisting in Joe’s shirt when his legs gave out under him. Joe’s arm kept moving. It wasn’t easy to get all fourteen stabs in before he saw the light go out of those eyes. He shook him off and stepped back, dragging in breaths and waiting. Waiting. Thinking about how Booker had walked away from Nicky in that alley all those decades ago—just left his body unguarded to wake up alone in the dark.

Booker came back to life with a gasp and a groan. He rolled onto his side in a puddle of red, fingering the tatters of his shirt with a look of sick horror.

Joe cleaned his knife on Booker’s jacket and then folded the blade back down and tucking it into his pocket. “Did it feel like a big deal?” he asked coldly.

Booker looked up at him. At least he looked shocked.

Joe took a deep breath and let it out, nodding to himself. “We’re going to start over from here, because Nicky doesn’t want this,” he gestured between them and at the blood. “But Nicky isn’t Nicky alone anymore. He _will_ tell me if you fuck up and if he doesn’t pay everything you do to him right back to you—I will. I don’t want to play this game. I don’t want to have to fight with you for the next millennia. But I will. And for him, I will win.”

He held his gaze until Booker nodded stiffly and then he turned on his heel and headed back inside.

He made it all of two steps before Nile asked, “What the hell happened?” She was back to her usual tone now, whatever unhappiness had plagued her cleared away.

Nicky frowned tightly.

Joe looked down, a blood handprint twisted in his shirt. He tossed Nicky an apologetic smile and shrugged. “Booker challenged me to a knife fight.”

Andy hummed a little, watching tv. “Did you win?”

Joe headed toward the hall, already pulling the dirty shirt off. “I think so.”


	12. Normalcy

Nicky watched Joe disappear down the hall, sliding Nile’s coffee mug across the counter to rest in front of her, though she was watching him go too.

He picked up the second mug and walked it over to Andy in the living room before following down the hallway to the bedroom.

When he nudged the door open, Joe was using his ruined shirt to rub away stray blood stains, cleaning his right hand. Nicky took a step in to close the door and then leaned back against the wall closest to it. “Did he hurt you?” Nicky asked quietly, in Arabic.

Joe looked up at him, still rubbing the blood from his wrist into the shirt. “No.”

Nicky nodded tightly and looked at the floor between them, thinking. How could everything be so good and so bad at the same time? Everything in him just wanted to be with Joe. To take him anywhere, far from Booker and his own regrets, and disappear with him. Doing anything with him would be like the first time. But they had work to do. They belonged with the others.

Nicky closed his eyes. He had created an impossible situation. He should never have allowed his relationship with Booker to get so out of hand. And he should never have involved Joe in it. What right did he have to make such a mess? What right did he have to Joe, to begin with? And by being with him he had created rifts—damaged Joe’s relationships with the others before he’d even been with them a year.

“-listening to me?” Nicky jumped when a hand touched his cheek, eyes opening and Joe’s voice finally landing.

* * *

Joe cringed when Nicky visibly started, dropping his hand back to his side but still standing close. “I know you wanted peace,” he said in Italian. “I am sorry if I caused more trouble—”

“No,” Nicky said tightly, voice hollow. “It is me.”

Joe chanced touched his cheek again, now that his eyes were open and he was here in this conversation again. He didn’t jump or turn his face away. “It is not you. Booker and I had a conversation and I…I wanted to make a point.” He sighed and shook his head. There was no point in lying to Nicky, not even for his own pride. “And I needed him to understand.”

“Understand what?” Nicky asked, but it sounded automated, like he was still partly in his own head.

Joe stared at him. “That you are not alone.”

Nicky stared back at him then, something in his gaze and his spirit returning to the here and now, softening with confusion.

Joe slid his hand from his cheek to his neck, fingers curling around the back, sliding into hair. “I told him we could start over from here but that if he hurts you again it will be repaid to him.”

Nicky frowned tightly, but there were tears in his eyes. “I don’t need you to do that.”

Joe nodded, hearing the pebbles of anger in the other man’s voice. Booker had accused Joe of treating Nicky like his damsel. He wasn’t. He knew that. Nicky was the shadow of death that found him in the desert. He was capable of defending himself, the question was just whether he would or not. “I didn’t do it for you,” Joe confessed. “I did it for me. You want us to stay here and I want us to stay here too. I had to find a way to live with Booker—to move forward with Booker.” He needed Nicky to understand. It hadn’t been an act of gallantry. It had been an act of desperation.

Nicky’s hand found his, cool fingers wrapping around to squeeze his hand. “Okay.”

“Nicky,” Joe pleaded, not sure that single word answer was understanding and not just acceptance. Nicky accepted too many things. “I never meant to overstep or—”

Nicky kissed him, short but sweet, his face still close when it broke and his eyes fixed on Joe’s mouth. “I have put you in an impossible position. You will never need to apologize to me.”

Joe shook his head gently. “As much as I would like to believe that I will never wrong you, forever is a long time, Nicolo. I will apologize sometimes and I will mean it. And I know this is a lot right now and that you feel responsible—”

“I am.”

Joe stared until Nicky met his gaze. “Do you wish you hadn’t told me?”

“No. If I wished anything it would be that I never made the mess to start with. But no matter what the only reason you are at odds with Booker is because you and I—”

“You think I would be okay with it if you and I weren’t together?” Joe interrupted, surprising them both with the way the words leaped out of him, upset that Nicky would think that of him even though the rational side tried to assure him it was just the hurt speaking.

Nicky stared back at him, momentarily unreadable, withdrawing, and then he was there again, softening and shaking his head. “No. I know you would have. I’m just…” He swallowed and looked away, struggling to describe something he had never had to explain before.

It was cruel, to think how many languages Nicky had learned, how many conversations he had heard and been apart of in his years, and he still didn’t know how to explain how he felt. Joe couldn’t leave him struggling any more than he could have sprouted wings and flown. “Uncomfortable?”

Nicky sighed but nodded. “Close enough.”

Joe took his face in both hands, thumbs stroking Nicky’s cheekbones and waiting for that gaze to meet his again. “I needed him to know you’re not on your own anymore, because if he doesn’t understand now and it happens again…” Joe dragged a breath. “I don’t know if that can stay as quiet as you want this to be. So, I told him if he did anything again you would pay it back to him and that if for whatever reason you didn’t—I would. Not because I want that to happen or because I think he’ll be more afraid of me than you, but because it felt like the best way to keep it from coming to that was to make the point now.”

Nicky stared back at him. Those eyes were marvels—the only thing that betrayed his age. Joe thought he could see time in them, rolling around in there like endless waves, considering everything he had ever witnessed over and over again. They gave everything away if you just looked—if you could bear to look. Joe could not imagine ever taking his gaze away.

“I am not trying to save you, Nicky. I am trying to be a part of you.”

Whatever was holding Nicky together cracked and a tear escaped that ocean in his eyes. He jolted in Joe’s arms at it, hand flying up to scrub it away. Joe kissed the spot where it had been.

“Are we okay?” Joe asked in a whisper against his skin, drawing back enough to see his expression again.

“Yes,” Nicky answered, just as quietly.

“Nicky?” Joe sought more confirmation. Something to know he hadn’t left a wound on this man.

Nicky nodded like he understood the question in his own name, like he could hear the raw uncertainty in Joe. His arms curled around Joe’s naked waist, the contact sending a wave of ease through his body. “I understand now,” Nicky whispered. “You made the right choice. I understand,” he soothed and pulled Joe into him, pressing his own face into Joe’s neck and taking a deep breath.

Joe sighed and hugged him back, curling his arms up his back. He smiled against his hair. “You still haven’t had coffee yet, have you?”

Nicky groaned against his neck.

Joe nodded and kissed his hair. “You can sit with Andy and I’ll make yours.”

Nicky snorted and unraveled from him. He still looked worn out but there was a flare of mischief in his eyes now. “No offense, my heart, but you’re not going to make it right…”

Joe faked offense, hurrying to grab a clean shirt when Nicky started out of the room—looking the part of a zombie now. “I can definitely make coffee,” he argued, following him down the hall.

Andy was still on the couch, holding her mug in both hands near her mouth and Nile was curled against her side. She looked up when they returned, cutting through the side of the little living room to the kitchen. “That was a quick quickie…” Nile muttered against the lip of her own cup.

Joe stopped, surprised and turning to look back at her.

She blinked innocently and went back to drinking her coffee.

He laughed. Okay. Well. That was awkward.

“Joe,” Nile called his name, dragging it out like she was still thinking about what she was about to ask next. “Does Nicky’s Malta house have a bathtub?”

Nicky fumbled a mug and then shot her glare from the kitchen—even though only Joe could see him do it from this angle.

“I’ve never been to the house,” she went on, still with that suspiciously innocent expression.

Andy, for her part, kept her attention on the tv, seeming not to be interested in the conversation at all.

“Um. No. Why?”

“No reason. Is it a big shower? Tile? Sliding glass door or a half door?” Nile went on.

Nicky swore from the kitchen but was now dedicated to getting coffee for himself.

Joe smiled at this odd conversation. “Why?”

Nile shrugged, sipping her coffee. “Just painting a mental image.” She intentionally dragged her gaze over him then, head to toe and then back up with a cheshire grin.

Joe laughed and turned toward the kitchen. “You told her about that?” He didn’t mind, at all. He just never would have expected Nicky to.

“Not exactly…” Nicky grumbled in Italian.

“She’s just jealous,” Andy said, still pretending to care about commercials for bullshit products no one needed.

“Andrea!” Nile complained.

“Turns out you both tried getting into Nicky’s pants the same way, only when she did it she got thrown out of the tub,” Andy went on, monotone but with a tiny smirk in the corner of her mouth.

Nicky gasped offense from the kitchen. “I would never throw her out of a tub!” he defended himself.

Nile groaned at the embarrassment but nodded, not having it in her to let his honor be tarnished it seemed. “He was very polite about it all. It was awful. He apologized and got out of the tub and then even made sure there was a towel for me when I was done with the bath. _His_ bath!”

Joe was trying to tame his grin but it was impossible. He loved stories about Nicky from Andy and Nile. They always saw the same events and moments so differently than Nicky himself.

Nile shook off her past shame suddenly, sitting up straighter to look more intently at Joe. “How did you do it?”

Joe blinked. “Do what exactly?” he played dumb.

Andy smiled to herself and drank her coffee.

Nile was not deterred by his pretend confusion. “Did you just like, jump into his shower?”

Nicky mumbled a string of curses in Italian, thumping two mugs down on the counter and starting to drip coffee into one of them. He was shaking his head but seeming to refuse to even glare at her now.

Joe studied him for a second, wondering if he was supposed to answer or not.

“Nile, it wouldn’t have mattered if you’d written Nicky a sonnet, you were never going to get into his pants. I don’t think technique was your problem…” Andy said diplomatically.

Nile shot her a raised brow. “Of course, you would say that. You always did like my technique.”

“To be fair,” Andy added a little sharply. “I have never turned away anyone that got into my bath, shower, pool, or lake.” She smiled to herself then, like a wave of pleasant memories had drifted by to her personal amusement. “Your technique never mattered.”

Nile looked torn between being offended by Andy and wanting information out of Joe.

“I asked,” Joe said, surprising them both.

Nile blinked up at him. “What?”

“I asked if I could join him in the shower,” Joe explained. His gaze cut toward Nicky in the kitchen for any sign that he shouldn’t tell. To the contrary, his Nicolo was smiling softly at the memory and focused on pouring his coffee. No longer swearing or thumping about. “And then I touched him and asked if that was okay,” he said, reveling in the way Nicky’s eyes flicked up to find his, something warm in them.

“Fuuuuck,” Nile exhaled, drawing his attention back to the two women on the couch.

Andy was hiding a smile behind the lip of her mug and Nile was staring at him. “Do you mind if I try that sometime?”

Joe laughed and shrugged. “Go for it.” He had almost stipulated that she could go for it if she didn’t try it on Nicky—but the whole “move” was built on requesting and he was pretty sure it would be hilarious if she asked to get into Nicky’s shower. From the sound of things, he’d probably tell her sure and then leave. But really, Joe was more than certain she had no intention of hitting on Nicky again—or him. She had been so honestly upset when Nicky left for recon and she thought she’d ruined his and Nicky’s budding romance. He could not have imagined the light going out of that woman until she thought she’d hurt Nicky.

Nicky walked over with two mugs, holding one out toward Joe.

Nile smiled. “We’ll talk more about it later,” she promised conspiratorially, as though their conversation had been a secret from Nicky—who shot her a _“you’re not funny”_ eyebrow lift before sitting down in one of the big chairs. They fell into normalcy arguing about what to watch, peppered with anecdotes and facts about the rise of television leading to a heated argument about inventors.

An hour later the door opened and Booker walked in, shaking wet strands of hair and trudging naked across the room.

Nile cocked her head to the side to make a point of watching his walk. “Went for a swim?”

Booker grunted something close to a yes, heading down the hall for the bathroom.

The normalcy didn’t dissolve when he had showered and dressed and returned to the living room later, the discussion now turning to the next meal. He didn’t say anything about their conversation or how it had ended in bloodshed. But he caught Joe’s gaze once and offered a subtle tip of his head, like they really had reached an understanding and could move forward.

* * *

Booker had laid on the blood stones for a while after reviving—before walking down to the sea to clean up. He counted the stabs out in his head over and over, wanting them to be any number but fourteen. He still remembered that night when he’d kissed Nicholas. It had been an impulse but he’d been so shocked when Nicky rejected him. Like, it hadn’t occurred to him that he ever would say no to anything. And why put the line there? He would take pain but not comfort from him? If they could not find that comfort with each other, than where? The world was full of the dying and they were the monsters left behind, left to toil away trying to make the world better for everyone else. And why? Because it was meant to be? Because Andy said so?

Booker didn’t want eternity. He didn’t want a purpose. He wanted his old life. He wanted to have lived it out and died with his family. His real family. He loved these people too but it wasn’t the same, it wasn’t real. Sometimes he thought they were damned, all of them, to try again and again to save people they didn’t know—people who barely even knew.

Sometimes he felt bad about laying hands on Nicky, but that was always right after.

He knew Nicky felt the weight of time, felt the solitude and pain of it, but he wouldn’t show it—wouldn’t admit this was pointless. He insisted there was a reason to everything. He insisted they had a purpose. And in all the years Booker had known him, Nicky had never wavered from that belief. And he had been so kind to Booker in the beginning. They had been almost friends for a moment in history. But it was his certainty, his calm, that drove the wedge. Booker couldn’t take it. He needed Nicky to admit that this was hell. He needed him to admit that he felt the same way he did—that he wanted out, that he hated this world for keeping him.

But Nicky would never admit it, would never doubt. Booker had taken his anger out on that other immortal body so many times he couldn’t remember them all now. But he did remember that time in France more than a hundred years ago, when he had kissed him for a moment. A moment, before being shoved away. That was the first time Nicky had laid hands on him and he only realized it in that moment. The first time Nicky had done anything and it had been to reject him.

Booker had shocked himself that night, when he stabbed the man to death. Fourteen. He remembered the feel of each thrust of his knife into that man’s body and now he remembered the echo of those wounds traveling across time to his own chest at Joe’s hand. Nicky really had told him everything. Why did that feel like a betrayal?

Maybe because it had been between just the two of them for all these decades? It had been theirs. Nicky had never tattled on him before and Booker had liked to think it was because he wanted it to keep happening. They both knew Andy would put a stop to it, after all.

Booker sat in the living room with the group of them. It was easy and comfortable and normal and he found, despite his own careful smile, he hated them all so much more for that—for pretending to be normal and happy. Even Nicky had lost the darkness that always lingered around him, had shed it like an old coat. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. If Booker had to live with the weight of eternity, so did Nicky. It was theirs, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your patience! I ended up starting a new day job kind of suddenly the other week and it really took me a bit to find my rhythm again and get back on track. I hope you're all still with me!
> 
> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/search/domini%20boombeam)


	13. End

It had been almost a year. Almost a year. He reminded himself of it again and again. He went through the days, from his first death in the desert and the shadow of death stretching over him like a blanket of mercy. That death had been Nicky. Nicky. He ran every memory of him through his head again and again, at first to stay sane without sunlight to count the passing of time, and then later, just because he was growing afraid he’d forget something.

How long had it been in the dark? In the ground? In this grave?

How long?

Every time he went through the memories of his year again, he felt once steady ground softening, threatening to shift—to change inside his head.

The thought crept into his mind more than once, that maybe none of it had even happened. Maybe he had died under that first bullet and this was his immortality in the ground, planted like seed that could not grow? He needed water. Nicky had brought him the water. That had happened. His perfect reaper had come for him. His perfect reaper would come for him again.

Wait. Just wait.

Breathe. Just breathe.

He remembered a mission, more than six months in. Nicky had a perch with a sight line to protect the rest of the team entering the facility at the top of an old abandoned building and Joe took up guarding the stairwell—the only way up to Nicky. It was a half hour of gunfire and thunderclap shots from Nicky’s rifle, and shouting and screaming up and down that stairwell.

Joe had let no one through until that last push of enemies. Two soldiers got past him, to the last platform, onto the roof where Nicky was laid out on his chest, focus out the scope on a scene far below—far away. He didn’t even turn when the two enemies shouted at him—didn’t even flinch when a bullet pelted the concrete only a few feet from his side when Joe tackled the man to the ground. He had stayed focused and just trusted that Joe would deal with it. For all the words Joe had, and the poetry he liked to speak and whisper to Nicky to see the way his cheeks colored or his eyes darkened, he had no words for the feeling in his chest then. Nicky trusted him completely and the weight of it was the weight of wings—if it was a burden, it was the burden of flight.

Nicky hadn’t died that night. He hadn’t even been injured once. And when they were finished with the mission, they all broke away in different directions, planning to meet up again in a couple days in Germany.

When they all split up, Nicky and Joe went together and by dawn, they got to their safehouse. They gave it a once over, making sure everything was in order before finally letting down their guard. They had the little loft to themselves.

Joe always had a little thrill in his gut when they were going to be alone for any length of time outside of a mission, even just a night. It wasn’t that they weren’t affectionate even with the family around, but it was different—of course it was different. Nicky was so conscious of others, Joe was convinced he was incapable of being rude in any way. Andy had snorted at him when he said that—certain that Nicky had it in him to be very rude when he wanted to be. Joe still doubted that was ever directed toward the family though.

They still slept in the same bed even when the whole family occupied the same room at night, which was often the case. It was odd at first, but he had to admit, he slept better when they were all together—when he wasn’t dreaming of the drowning woman, that is.

He dropped their bag on a chair near the bed. They had one bag now when they traveled. Joe couldn’t even remember exactly when that had happened. Between one mission and another, when they’d tossed clothes and bought new ones, Nicky had just packed everything into one backpack. It had fit fine. They traveled light. It made sense. Joe loved the romantic shit Nicky did without realizing the implications of it. Like putting their things in one bag—clearly expecting that they would never be hiding out in different safehouses. Like when he’d let Joe leave some of his things at the Malta house, putting his sketchbooks on the shelves among his notebooks.

And then there was the way Nicky talked, the words he used—always eluding to how much time they had, calling him _my heart_ and _my love_ like it was second nature, even in front of the others. Nicky was not ashamed or shy about his feelings, even if he didn’t always know how to put those feelings into words.

Joe stepped out of his boots to change into clean clothes before bed. For once they weren’t bloody or even all that dirty, but it was habit. He pulled his shirt off and tossed it toward the dirty pile, unbuttoning the front of his jeans when he turned and found Nicky watching him. Joe grinned slowly. He had learned what that look meant. Nicky was thinking something sexy. Joe turned fully toward him, slowly, hand still on the front of his pants and hip cocking slowly to the side, loving the way Nicky’s gaze bounced between his hip, his hands, and his mouth. Nicky’s fingers moved, like they were tapping a rhythm at the air, his thoughts moving through his skin and bones without him even realizing it.

“Tell me what you want,” Joe urged, voice low.

Nicky’s eyes flared a little, mouth opening a little. Inhale, and then finally those ancient oceans looked back at him. “You,” he answered, a tidal wave of need in that voice.

“Tell me,” Joe pressed.

Nicky’s teeth caught his lip again, thinking, hesitating. He wouldn’t always be forward. Wouldn’t always say what he wanted outright. But it was getting there, more and more every time. The room was dark, the heavy curtains drawn to hold back even the rising sun and keep them safe in that forever night. “Up against the wall,” Nicky whispered. “Turn around.” He said it, but there was a lilt to it, a sort of question because it wasn’t in Nicky to demand or order.

Joe hummed a moan and nodded, turning his back to his lover and taking the two steps to the wall, spread his legs a little and leaned forward, arms to the wall. It was exposing and thrilling, and his skin sang when Nicky’s hands found him. He stripped him down, kissing and touching. Joe was panting and more than ready by the time Nicky took his hands off him and undressed himself. He put his forehead to the wall. The first time Nicky had fucked him, had been slow and soft in a bed in Spain. That had been many times ago. Fingers danced up his spine before holding the back of his neck, grip flexing when he pressed into his body from behind.

They both groaned when Nicky was flush to his back, buried inside him.

“Nicolo,” Joe gasped, pressing back against him, nodding against the wall. As though he heard his thoughts, Nicky started moving, thrusting. Joe shivered, loving the grip Nicky still had on the back of his neck. Nicky had been so careful in the first months of their relationship, and the first times they had sex. He would never have tried even this. One of Nicky’s arms framed Joe’s against the wall, their fingers lacing, locking.

When Joe started panting his name, chanting it, singing it, Nicky release the back of his neck and replaced fingers with lips, his hand finding a new grip around his cock and stroking him in time with his thrusts. They came one after the other, lingered like that for a while, and then Nicky led him to the bathroom and showered with him. Joe remembered it all so clearly. It was routine and he loved that. They went to bed, dressed to go if they had to, Joe’s back to the wall and Nicky facing the door, his back to Joe and his gun on the bedside table. Joe remembered pressed his face into the back of Nicky’s neck and breathing him in—not the Malta soap scent but still Nicky. He wondered if they would smell the same someday. He wondered if he’d be able to tell. And when they were almost asleep, Joe had asked very quietly, “If I asked you, would you marry me?”

He wasn’t sure he’d thought about it before the words came out of his mouth and surprised himself with the way his nerves kicked up. Nicky turned over enough to look up at him, just enough light in the room from that eager daylight outside to see by. His smile was beautiful. “Are you being romantic or serious, my heart?” he asked, sounded charmed either way. “Our passports are all fake and—”

“If we said we were, we would be,” Joe decided then, suddenly very serious. “If you wanted to be, I would make it so.”

Nicky’s smile changed. It didn’t leave but it wasn’t as light. He turned more, facing Joe on their bed and touching his chest thoughtfully, over his heart. He had an unreadable expression, thoughtful and almost sad. “You know that place between alive and dead, my love? That second before you wake up, when you’re not quite either? I think I have been there my whole life until you. I think I have been dying and until I found you in the desert, I had yet to wake up.”

Joe stared at him, wondering then if it was a dream and later if it was something he had made up.

Nicky smiled and kissed him in the dark. “I am yours any way you want me, Yusuf.”

Joe curled his arms around him, holding him tightly.

He thought through the memory again. And again. And again.

He lay there in that box in the dark, in that coffin in the ground, the world bearing down on him with no escape but his own mind.

Nicky was real. Nicky was his. Nicky would find him. He had before. He would again. Joe closed his eyes and hated the tears that escaped. He had had a year with Nicky, a year of a life after his death. And then someone had snatched it away.

* * *

Booker washed his face and scrubbed a hand over his features, dragging a deep breath. He had left the country after he nabbed Joe and put him in the ground. It had been too easy. It was their own fault for making it so easy. All he’d had to do was wait for a moment when he was alone and all Booker had ever had was time. A bullet to the back of the head and he had never even seen it coming—never even seen who did it. Not that he would be left wondering. Joe was smart.

It had been a week. Only a week. That was nothing. Booker clenched his jaw and told himself again, that he wasn’t wrong. Joe needed some perspective and Nicky needed to wake the fuck up from his fantasy. He wasn’t wrong. They were.

He would disappear for a while. Nicky would either have to hunt him or search for Joe. Booker wasn’t sure which he hoped for, tried not to think about it. He would make them suffer for a while and when everyone had their priorities in order, he’d bring Joe back. Booker wasn’t unreasonable. They just needed to learn a lesson. They just needed to feel the weight of this curse like he did.

He opened his eyes and almost jumped out of his skin when he saw a woman behind him in the mirror. He twisted around, staring at a face that couldn’t be. He knew her. But he didn’t.

Quynh tipped her head to the right, like a bird, ancient eyes unreadable. She did not look like he imagined. She looked perfectly modern in her tailored coat and boots. “You’ve been bad,” she whispered, the corner of her mouth pulling toward a smile that held no amusement. “You hurt my boy.”

His mind raced. “How did you find me?” was the first question to break free. He had disappeared. He wasn’t even expecting Nicky to find him for at least a few months.

Her cruel smile grew and he saw the touch of madness in her eyes. He couldn’t be sure if that was a product of the sea or if it had always been hers. He had never met Quynh outside of his nightmares. “I have watched you for your whole wretched life. I have seen.”

Booker moved fast, pulling the gun he had tucked in the back of his jeans. He got it free but she closed the space between them. He didn’t feel the knife but he lost control of his limbs, knees hitting the floor and his gun falling onto the tiles. He managed a swear just before he blacked out.

* * *

They were arguing again. Nicky was in the middle of it, he could hear himself. He had told them that Booker wouldn’t go to any of the safehouses they knew about. He would disappear. Andy glared at him again while Nile paced and listed off possibilities.

They hadn’t understood when he said Booker had taken Joe last week. They hadn’t believed him when he’d come back to the house two days after trying to catch up to Booker and failing. _Failing_. That’s what he’d been doing every minute of every day since he came back to the house with Nile and found the puddle of blood and drag marks to where Booker’s car had been parked. He had known—had felt the absence of his heart the moment he saw that puddle of red. Nile had gone inside to look for Joe and Booker, but Nicky had gotten in the car and tried to head him off from wherever the fuck he was going.

Andy had thought some enemy had caught up with them and snatched the two. Nile had been ready to do anything to get them back. Nicky had had to explain. He had had to take the time to explain what a complete mess he had made out of their lives when his soul was withering in his chest, his skin on fire with the need to move—to find Joe.

They had both gone still and stared at him like he was lying or joking or just telling the horrific truth.

Nile had tears in her eyes. Nicky had to look away because he didn’t understand that.

Andy stared at him then, like she was staring at him now a week later in another house in another country. She stared at him like he had betrayed her or like she had betrayed him and neither of them had figured it out yet.

“How could you not tell me?” she finally snapped, right in the middle of Nile rolling out their options.

Nicky cringed because he had known it was coming and because he didn’t have the time for it now. He didn’t have the time for anything until he found Joe.

She leaned back against a table, fingers clutching at the sides, knuckles straining and her glare still fixed on him. “More than a hundred years?”

“Andy…” Nicky exhaled, closing his eyes. “It seemed fine at the time.”

“Fine?” she spat but didn’t move from that spot. Maybe she was holding herself there with her grip on the table. “How many times did Booker kill you like that?”

Nicky looked away, dragging a breath, doing everything he could to keep himself in that room. He had built this pyre for himself. He owed them the burning. “It didn’t usually come to that.”

Nile winced and swore under her breath. “Can we just focus—”

“Was it the Catholic guilt, Nicolo?” Andy demanded, tears in her eyes but anger twisting her features. “Still owing pain to your god?”

Nicky glared back at her. He loved her. But he did not belong to her and they had other problems now. “Let it go,” he ground out, suddenly angry. “You did not want to know, so you did not see it. I did not want to tell you, so I dealt with it. How we—"

They all heard someone in the stairwell. Nile pulled a gun from inside her jacket and Nicky turned around to face the door.

There were no footfalls in the hall outside their door but they all knew someone was there. Nicky walked right up to it and threw it open, because there was a chance it could be Joe. And if there was a chance it could be Joe, he wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a landmine let alone open a fucking door.

He stared at the woman there, maybe he had finally lost his mind. He had to turn and look at Andy to see if he was hallucinating but the tears in her eyes, the way she straightened, let go of the table, and just stared at Quynh told him she was real. At any other time in his life he would have reached for her, would have had a thousand questions, but his heart was a stone and he was closer to dead than he had ever felt in his life. Every breath he took felt like he was suffocating.

Nile spoke her name and Quynh spared the other woman a gentle smile before stepping into the apartment. She moved first to Nicky and he leaned his face down into her hands when she reached for him, the way he had a thousand times before in a life long ago. She had been a friend and a partner and a sister and a mother. He had loved this woman the way he had only ever loved the women in this room. Tears slid down his face that he had been holding in since he found that puddle and felt his life stop again.

* * *

Quynh took his face in her hands and brought his forehead down to hers, sighing in relief because it had been lifetimes of death since she last held this boy. He had always been a boy to her. So withdrawn and waiting to come alive. She had so much to say to him, to catch up on, but not quite yet. She let go and pushed a pair of car keys into his hand. “The Frenchman is in the trunk,” she said gently in his old Italian. Light returned to his eyes, just the tiniest shred. “It will be okay. If you can not make him speak, I will.”

Nicholas shuddered out a breath and nodded tightly. She nudged her head toward the door and he bolted.

“Where the fuck—” Andromache started.

Quynh shot her love a glare that shut her up quick.

Nile straightened and took a step back, even with those big tears in her beautiful eyes. “How?” she asked, all of her heartache and joy and confusion right there on the surface.

Quynh came closer. “It finally rusted. Everything breaks apart eventually.” She shrugged like it wasn’t still a nightmare, like she couldn’t still feel the weight and cold of the sea. But she had lost enough time to it.

Andromache stared at her still, stray tears running down her cheeks. “I looked—” she started.

Quynh winced because she could hear the hundreds of years of guilt in her voice that she had felt reverberating through her from the dark of every death. “I know it. I did not doubt it.”

Andromache shuddered out a breath but waited, like a woman damned.

Quynh came closer, closer, until she could almost touch her—almost breathe her in again. But she was too angry to give in just yet. Quynh could fight gravity if she had to. “He told you why this happened?”

“Nicky?”

_Nicky. Nicholas. Nicolo._ “Yes.”

Andromache nodded tightly, nose wrinkling angrily. Temper. She had always had so much temper. “How did you not see it?” Quynh demanded. She had seen it, in her misery and endless death, she lived off the glimpses of their lives. And she fought harder for every time she saw them suffering. She had seen the Frenchman and her Nicholas. She had seen it sometimes from Nicholas’s eyes and body and pain and other times from the Frenchman’s anger and fists. She knew Nicholas had endured so much worse in his time, but it did not curb her fury.

Andromache just stared at her for a long while and then a smile broke across her face—that beautiful face that Quynh had looked for in her death sleeps for hundreds of years. She laughed with tears. “Are you shitting me? You’ve been…For so long…And the first thing you’re pissed about is this mess?”

Quynh crossed her arms over her chest, glaring. “You were supposed to take care of them,” she snapped, like this had ever been a plan. Like they had discussed what would happen if one of them fell. They had not—but it had been known. If it had been Andromache—Quynh would have protected Nile and Nicholas.

“We didn’t know,” Nile chimed in, eyes still teary.

Quynh softened a fraction when she rolled her head to the side to lay her gaze over the other woman, she reached out and touched her arm and Nile made a choking sound when she clutched at her hand. It was all too much. She had been gone for so long. Maybe that was why Quynh clung so hard to this one thing—this one anger. It helped her hold herself together. “I am not mad at you, little crocodile,” she promised.

Andromache finally moved, taking a big step forward, still smiling with tears. “Just mad at me? For this? Not for…” she choked and the smile fell.

Quynh groaned but reached out with her other arm, grabbing Andromache by the jacket and dragging her into her. Sometimes it was better not to fight gravity. Quynh exhaled when the woman’s arms wrapped around her and she let herself lean in, one hand still in Nile’s hold. “No. I am not mad about the sea. Not mad at you,” she whispered into her hair words she’d wanted to tell her for hundreds of years.

* * *

Booker woke from what had to be his fourth death in the last few hours, this time sitting in a chair with his wrists cuffed to the sides and a bag over his head.

He knew Nicky had him—had seen him between that third and forth death when the truck was popped open and the little fuck shot him in the face. So, he wasn’t surprised to see him again when the bag was taken off his head.

Booker winced against bright daylight, first looking down at himself to realize he was cuffed to a wheelchair and then around at the nice apartment. This was not one of their safehouses and he couldn’t see Andy or Nile or that damned Quynh anywhere. “What—” he started but Nicky grabbed the back of his chair and turned him, wheeling him up to one of the big windows now open wide.

He had a sniper rifle set up on a table. He grabbed Booker by the back of the hair to lean him forward, to push his face toward the scope. “Look,” Nicky ordered, his voice gravel.

Booker stared through the scope, unimpressed with whatever show this was. He looked at an apartment across the street. This was France—he knew it immediately. How long had he been in that trunk? A man walked into the living room with a cup of coffee and sat down in a large chair, reading the book in his other hand. “What the fuck am I looking at?” Booker ground out.

“ _That_ , is one of the last two descendants you have in the world,” Nicky explained, infinitely calm.

Booker went still. “You’re full of shit.”

“Look at him,” Nicky ground out. His voice wasn’t that steady, hollow that had driven Booker mad for centuries. No, it was molten steel, pure fury, like nothing Booker had ever heard before. “Look at him and tell me he doesn’t stand like your son? Look at his eyes and tell me they don’t remind of your wife’s.”

Booker bared his teeth, straining against his bindings. Of course, it was one of his. He had known the moment he first saw him. But why? “You’re bluffing.”

“Tell me where Joe is.” Nicky had not asked until that moment, Booker realized. He had not questioned him while he was in the trunk, or when he dragged him out. He had not pleaded or tried to reason. He had not even let Andy do the asking.

Booker’s heart beat in his throat. “Fuck you, Nick. You’re not going to do shit and it’s good for the kid to get some perspective. Maybe some time alone will get rid—”

Nicky hit him so hard that the chair fell over. Booker was still coughing and spitting blood when Nicky pulled him upright again. He grabbed his face and bent over to look him in the eye. Had Nicky’s eyes always been that pale? That cold? When he spoke again, he did so in French. “Sebastien, if you do not tell me where he is—I will shoot that man.”

Booker stared at him. It was impossible. Nicky would never kill an innocent person. But his gut twisted because there was nothing about him that suggested he was lying. “You wouldn’t,” he said, trying to believe it, trying to remind him of reality.

Nicky had not looked away, staring back at him and letting him search his eyes for any thread of deception. “I have done horrible things, Booker. Letting you lay hands on me was nothing because I have done so much worse. You think I can’t kill this man because he isn’t holding a gun? Tell me where Joe is, or I will go over there, drag him back here, and put a gun in his hand. He’ll raise it against me, who wouldn’t? And I will paint you in his blood.”

Booker shook his head tightly. He wouldn’t. Nicky wouldn’t.

Nicky nodded, like he could hear his thoughts. He straightened and turned for the door.

“Nick!” Booker shouted, struggling against his cuffs. “Fuck. Nick!”

“You wanted to play monsters with me, Booker,” he reminded, not even pausing to look back at him. He grabbed the keys off the counter near the door. “After this one, we’ll go to Sweden. You have a great grand-daughter there.”

Booker thrashed so hard he almost knocked the chair over. “Nicky! The graveyard outside Mende!”

Nicky stopped, the door open but still in hand. He turned to look back at him. “Your graveyard?”

Booker swallowed hard, glaring back at him. He hated himself for giving it up so easily but even if he wasn’t sure that Nicky would pull the trigger, he was afraid he’d really pluck that man from his life and bring him over here—that his own pain would be stained onto another generation of his family. “My grave.”

Nicky swore under his breath and cast his gaze up, nodding slowly. He returned to the room, letting the door swing shut. He wheeled Booker into a bathroom. “I pray you are not lying,” he said coldly before shutting him into the dark room.

Booker did not hear the front door when he left but he was sure Nicky had locked it—had left him here in case it was a lie. It wasn’t. He sat there in the dark for another day, maybe two, until someone finally came. He winced when the door opened and light spilled into the bathroom. Nile stood there, the last person he’d expected. There was no amusement or joy on her face and he knew she knew.

He had known everyone would find out what he had done, hadn’t he? There had been no other outcome. Nicky would have had to tell them. Why had he done that? Why had he done any of that?

“You really fucked up,” Nile said grimly.

He huffed a sad laugh but nodded.

She sighed. “You can’t come home, Book. I’m going to take you someplace to get you help. We’ll check in on you—”

He dragged a breath, smiling thinly. “You always were the nice one,” he mumbled.

Nile looked at him strangely and then shook her head. “I wanted to throw you in your grave for a while for what you did. Quynh thought it was too cruel.” She looked away, like looking at him at all was hard now. “We trusted you. I trusted you. I hope you can get better, Booker, but I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

She uncuffed him because without her trust, he wasn’t a threat to her and he was aware of the gun in her jacket and the way her hand was always free and ready to pull it if he moved on her.

* * *

Nicky hadn’t called the others—hadn’t even thought to. He’d let them know where Booker was if he found Joe. And if Joe wasn’t in Booker’s old grave, he’d get creative, maybe steal a body from the morgue on his way back to that apartment and make him think he’d really killed his great-grandson.

It was raining by the time he got to the graveyard. He hopped a fence, shovel in hand, and found the plot without trouble. He remembered this spot. Remembered how Booker had haunted his own false grave for a decade, mourning himself. He should have guessed. He should have known. He should never have let it happen to start with.

Nicky was soaked in rain and mud by the time he hit the coffin. It wasn’t very deep but it was a metal monstrosity, the sort wealthy people purchased to keep their rotting bodies from rejoining the soil like everyone else. His hands shook when he cleared the dirt away enough to get his fingers around the lid, pulling violently. If he’d been any sort of calm, he would have dug more, cleared the sides, but he wasn’t calm and he didn’t care if mud sank in to stain the satin lining.

He pulled the upper lid open and the all too familiar exhale of death escaped.

“Yusuf?” Nicky spoke softly, surprised he still had it in him. He had felt like a statue since the other man disappeared only a week ago. Like his old self, only it didn’t feel right anymore—it didn’t feel normal to not smile, to not laugh, to not want. He knelt on the bottom lid, reaching into the cavity of the dark grave. He knew his hands were muddy but he couldn’t stop himself from reaching, just like he knew he didn’t deserve this man, but he couldn’t stop himself from wanting. It just was. His fingers brushed Joe’s cheek, he knew it was his even before his eyes adjusted to the darkness there to make out the shapes of his face.

“Joe, my heart, can you hear me?” he asked gently, endlessly patient now. He could wait here forever. He inhaled when he heard the other man draw a deep breath of clean air, his hand wrapping slowly around Nicky’s wrist.

“You are late,” Joe rasped from his gave and Nicky laughed with tears in his eyes, nodding. “Very late,” Joe went on, quoting himself from the first time they had met in that desert. “Is it normal to make a dead man wait this long?”

Nicky helped him sit up and then to climb out of the grave until they were tangled in the wet grass beside the gaping ground. Nicky felt like it was his grave they had emerged from—like he was the one saved from death again. He cupped Joe’s face in his hands and leaned their foreheads together. “You were hard to find,” he whispered. “But I will always find you.”

Joe’s arms curled around his waist, hugging him close. “Take me home for a while?”

Nicky nodded. “Anywhere you want.”

“Home,” Joe said again and Nicky smiled slowly. He meant the house in Malta. It had been a house before but it had become a home since he first brought Joe there.

“Joe?” Nicky asked, in the dark under the rain.

“Yes, my reaper?” Joe smiled around the words. Nicky could hear it.

“If I asked you to marry me, would you?”

Joe laughed, the sound strained and husky but still so him—so real and warm that it gave Nicky’s soul life. Joe kissed and drank the rain from his skin, nodding. “Any day, anytime, anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand I'm done. I could have dragged this out, but I don't like cliffhangers and didn't want to leave things hanging between so it's one big chapter. I hope you guys enjoyed the story!
> 
> [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> Got this fantastic idea over on [tumblr](https://dominimoonbeam.tumblr.com/) as a fic prompt. I'm really excited to get to the lovey parts and romantic speech parts!


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